The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  “No, no, no—that was because you buried him under a mountain.”

  Baelfeir turned a slight frown out over the landscape of rolling hills, city and sand. He sighed. “I may have overreacted.”

  Leyd leaned back on his hands and stared openly at him. “Fancy hearing that from your mouth.”

  “It’s easier to say without the tusks.” Baelfeir sipped his wine. “On another topic, I saw your brother recently.”

  Leyd gave a snort of contempt. He pushed off the wall and threw himself down on the lounge chair again, where he drank his wine in immoderate gulps. “My little brother Phaedor’s doing what he always has, playing lackey to noble causes and some shite.” Suddenly he focused an intense look on him. “Have you seen my sister?”

  Baelfeir shook his head.

  Leyd deflated. “She’s the steward of the Fifth Vestal’s sa’reyth. Did you hear that? A gods-damned caretaker. My sister. Playing bloody babysitter to the fecking drachwyr. Maybe now that you’re back you can repurpose her towards something worthwhile.”

  Worthwhile, was the word he’d used, but the haunted, bitter look in his eyes said, something worth living for.

  Baelfeir frowned.

  While it angered him that the tapestry’s thousands of gilded threads had been so reduced, he had warned Cephrael of such an eventuality. By that time, of course, Cephrael was no longer listening to him.

  But Leyd’s state of mind...this was a consequence he hadn’t envisioned, any more than he’d imagined he would return to the realm to find his opponent’s hand all but missing from the tapestry.

  Cephrael couldn’t have abandoned this world. To imagine it possible would be to underestimate him, and underestimation of an opponent was a prime error. The only prudent assumption would be to decide the angiel’s absence from the tapestry was by design.

  Yet...that would imply an omniscience his opponent had never assumed before, lest neither of them have a game to play. There is no game in knowing everything.

  When Baelfeir first sensed Leyd’s presence in that place, he’d entertained a hope that the zanthyr might have some insight into Cephrael’s whereabouts; but Leyd was clearly too mired in hopelessness to offer more than despair.

  Baelfeir set down his glass. “Thank you for the wine.”

  Leyd rolled his head around on the cushion to look up at him. “Give her my regards, when you see her.”

  Baelfeir nodded and turned to go.

  “Don’t wait too long to pay her a visit,” Leyd called after him. His smile was cold, and empty, and reflective of a psyche that was terribly, undeniably fractured. “As they say in Hallovia...a storm’s a’comin.”

  Thirty-eight

  “If what applies to one applies to all...which came first,

  Shadow or the egg?”

  –A popular joke among Warlocks

  Reading the minds of the populace is simply a matter of matching starpoints.

  Ean mulled over Rafael’s words while weaving among the guests crowding the main floor of the museum dedicated ‘to the life and works of the Literato N’abranaacht, Martyr of Myacene.’

  Shail’s latest, probably self-titled epithet grated on Ean’s credulity, while the number of people actually using it grated on his patience.

  Their coach had dropped them before the residence-turned-museum during the enchanted hour of dusk. Wielder’s lights lit the large manor, such that it glowed against the backdrop of tree-lined paths that crisscrossed the Sormitáge campus. A red carpet had been rolled out from the museum’s porticoed entrance, and a long line of elegantly dressed guests waited along its length to be admitted.

  The moment Ean and Rafael emerged from the coach in the guise of Cristiano Sargazzo and Roberto di Castronicci, the guests started applauding. Ean had embraced Absolute Being around the entire museum to ensure the solidity of his illusion, but he still admitted a trill of apprehension as he walked past the line of people. Adept and na’turna alike stepped aside to let him and Rafael move to the front. Not a one appeared to have any sense that Ean wasn’t who he was pretending to be.

  Something in this reality unsettled him.

  He wished suddenly that he’d followed the ramifications of this choice to impersonate Cristiano to its furthest ends. Might he be placing an innocent man in danger by wearing his face to the fête of a dragon?

  Ean knew the potential ramifications of his decision as it could affect his pattern of consequence. Why hadn’t he sought equally to explore the consequences to less important threads in the mortal tapestry, namely those of Cristiano and Roberto themselves? It seemed like a conscientiousness he would’ve employed, before...

  Before you bound yourself to a Warlock?

  Ean could tell that his binding with Rafael was changing him. He could sense it in shifting viewpoints—ideas he’d never envisioned envisioning would suddenly impose themselves on his consciousness. Unwelcome ideas, some of them.

  And he perceived it in the way certain consequences no longer held the same looming sense of peril. Close association with immortality did that to a being, Ean supposed, even be he mortal himself.

  Moreover, the more Ean saw Rafael use deyjiin, the more those workings altered the confines of his expectations, the more he could conceive of shifting the boundaries of the possible...the more he found himself clutching to beliefs and mores that he’d thought would be forever inviolate. And he’d barely been back in the world for three days.

  Arion had argued endlessly with Markal over ethicality and the First Law. The maestro had maintained that sometimes a wielder couldn’t foresee all consequences relating to the effect he intended to create; therefore his decision needed extensive ethical deliberation. Arion had maintained that a wielder shouldn’t act without KNOWING the effect he intended. They’d worn ruts in the floors of Malthus Hall, circling each other on the matter.

  Ean wished he might’ve deliberated this choice a bit longer.

  It only took three lifetimes, but he was finally seeing Markal’s point of view. Never had he found their old argument more critical, for Rafael conceived of no innate sense of right and wrong. His morality was as boundless as deyjiin, and his thoughts couldn’t help but impinge on Ean’s when the universes of their minds were constantly overlapped.

  Ean wondered if Arion would ever have been so bold as to wear another man’s face into a Malorin’athgul’s lair...

  He wondered if Arion would have been so naïve, so unscrupulous with another man’s life...

  He wondered if his old self would look at him now and think his hubris unconscionable, or if Arion would’ve sought the same justifications that Ean was using to live with his choices...

  With all of these wonderings spiraling in the part of his mind not focused on holding his illusion solidly in place, the prince continued along the red carpet towards the doors of the museum. Rafael-as-Roberto walked at his side, waving and nodding politely to the crowd, who’d all stepped back to clear their way while applauding their progress down the aisle.

  Ean did his best to copy Cristiano’s manner and ease of movement. When he tossed back his hair from his eyes and smiled in a way he’d seen Cristiano do many times that afternoon, the crowd cheered.

  The attendant at the door stepped aside to let them enter, blabbering words of praise. Ean clapped a hand on his shoulder as he passed, and the attendant froze with an awe-struck expression.

  They moved inside with the man still staring after them, until a woman waiting to be admitted said something sharp and uncomplimentary to regain his attention.

  Beyond an archway, an atrium spiraled upwards via a grand staircase, the walls of which hosted portraits of famous Arcane Scholars.

  Guests milled on the chequerboard floor as well as on the marble stairs. As Ean entered, many of them were leaning over the ornate balustrade to see who was causing such a commotion with their arrival.

  A waiter approached, bearing crystal goblets.

  Reading the minds of the populace is simply
a matter of matching starpoints.

  As he accepted the offered wine, Ean murmured to Rafael, “Matching starpoints...”

  Rafael took a glass from the tray and shifted his gaze to Ean. “Yes?”

  “I’ve been thinking about this.”

  “So I gathered. And what new conclusion have you reached today?”

  Rafael thought Ean spent too much time involved in thinking that only resulted in concluding. The Warlock considered this was a waste of time better spent doing—apparently without thinking or concluding first.

  Ean resisted the urge to gulp his wine. In the back of his thoughts, his fourth strand illusion hummed.

  “I’ve been wondering if this is how truthreaders read the thoughts of others,” Ean said. “Could they be matching starpoints without knowing it?”

  “It’s an intriguing theory.” Rafael sipped his wine and considered its merits—the idea or the wine, Ean couldn’t quite tell which. After a bit of this, he remarked, “Tanis certainly seemed to have some native understanding of Shadow. Sinárr said the lad matched his starpoints instinctively.”

  “Tanis being Tanis, it might just be coincident to Tanis,” Ean noted, “but it would make sense if the action of matching starpoints was ingrained in the patterns of a truthreader’s thinking.”

  Rafael-as-Roberto regarded him with admiration in his gaze—the highest of compliments from a Warlock. Ean had no idea why Rafael was suddenly looking at him that way.

  “You do realize we’ve embarked upon unexplored seas?” the Warlock observed musingly as he sipped his wine. “Boundaries have been crossed. New vistas opened. You fear that our connection is changing you, but do you not imagine it is also changing me?”

  Ean studied him. Their mental energies were bound in a complexity of magic that he barely understood. He’d matched starpoints with the Warlock and now shared an intimacy of connection that he couldn’t even define, much less fully explain to anyone. Yet he still couldn’t tell that Rafael wasn’t Roberto di Castronicci.

  Ean inquired quietly, “Is it changing you?”

  Rafael gave a noncommittal smile. “It might be. As they say, how deep does the alabaster go?”

  Ean did a double-take on him. “Where did you hear that?”

  Rafael waved carelessly with his goblet. “You think too much.” He looked to the staircase. “I believe the residence is upstairs. Shall we, as they say, proceed into the dragon’s lair?” Then he flashed a devilish grin and confessed, “I’ve always wanted to say that.”

  Upstairs, what had once been several residences had been remodeled into one large gallery, ostentatious with marble and glass, forming a U-shape around the former residence of the literato. The place still smelled of plaster and paint and the less subtle aroma of the perfumed elite milling around.

  New white walls hosted a lengthy series of framed writings. Plaques hanging beneath each one explained their enormous historic value, using words like epochal, quintessential, iconic, and climacteric. Glass-enclosed cases displaying varied artifacts dotted the rest of the expansive space. Plaques on stanchions beside each case described their contents with equal melodrama.

  Far more arresting to Ean were the patterns infesting the room like invisible jellyfish, promising a toxic sting to anyone with an innate affinity to elae’s fifth strand.

  Ean wasn’t sure how Rafael perceived the space, but the Warlock’s exhale was telling of his opinion of it.

  “Shailabanáchtran has certainly gone to great lengths to mark his territory,” he noted in that flat, slightly aggrieved tone he reserved uniformly for Pelas’s younger brother. “Perhaps you could simply disperse your particles and reconvene before the doorway?”

  Ean gave him a look. “Disperse my particles?”

  Rafael sighed anew. “Over two thousand years since Cephrael gave humanity the secrets to building universes and what have all of you done with it but bury the work in the sand and march your toys across its cover?” He exhaled forlornly. “I suppose you have some plan to deal with these patterns?”

  “Yes.” Ean turned a tight look back to the room at large. “I intend to avoid them.”

  Across the gallery, the doors to Shail’s former residence opened to expel a blond man. He turned and locked the doors behind himself, then smiled at the guests who’d begun gravitating towards him. He looked barely five years Ean’s senior and was wearing a white evening jacket and waistcoat, elegantly tailored, over black pants.

  Ean instantly recognized him as the man he’d followed through the piazza. Though the man had been wearing a Palmer’s hood at the time, Ean would’ve known him in any guise from the patterns webbing his consciousness.

  In spite of himself, Ean felt a trill of alarm. The last time he’d collided with this man, Shailabanáchtran had stepped out of Shadow and shortly thereafter tossed Ean into it.

  The museum-goers were enthusiastically greeting the newcomer and creating such a mob around him that he’d barely made it two steps away from the residence doors.

  Rafael said privately across their binding, That, I believe, is our host...but perhaps you knew this already?

  He’s Shail’s puppet, Ean returned tightly.

  Ah... Rafael looked back to the man. That would explain why his thoughts are like flies caught in a web. I cannot stir them without the entire mass sticking together. I don’t perceive Shailabanáchtran’s aura about this man, however. Do you?

  I can’t tell if he’s in there or not—leastwise not from this distance.

  Rafael clasped hands behind his back. How do you want to play this, Ean?

  Ean fixed a cutting gaze on Shail’s puppet. Surgically.

  A narrow corridor of safety wove between Shail’s wards. Ean had suspected he would find something of this nature; otherwise Shail himself could not have entered or left without tripping his own alarms. Ean rapidly memorized the design of the path. Then he released the fifth from his awareness entirely.

  The patterns disappeared from view. Shail’s puppet appeared a normal man.

  Ean swallowed and started forward.

  It was a harrowing twenty steps crossing that room trusting to memory alone, feeling the sudden absence of the fifth like the hot summer sun vanished behind a cloud, knowing at any moment that one misstep would trip him right into one of Shail’s wards.

  It wasn’t until that moment that Ean realized how closely he held the fifth in his consciousness at all times. He never took a step without scanning for patterns. Even in T’khendar, he’d kept the strand close. And though he held his fourth-strand illusion solidly in place, he felt barren without the fifth, and vulnerable lacking its protection. He’d have felt more comfortable walking naked across that room.

  As they neared their host, the man caught sight of them and excused himself from the throng of guests. He smiled as he neared and extended his hand warmly to Ean.

  “Welcome! Oh, you do us great honor, Signore Sargazzo!” Guileless hazel eyes gazed at them from a face with the strong cheekbones of the Danes. “I cannot thank you enough for attending our opening gala.”

  Rafael whispered into his thoughts, This man has never met either of us.

  Ean took the man’s offered hand and smiled politely. “The honor is ours, Signore...”

  “Keil van Olmsted.”

  “A pleasure to make your acquaintance. May I present to you Roberto di Castronicci.”

  Keil bowed to Rafael. “An honor, signore.”

  “You’re the museum curator?” Rafael asked.

  “I am, sir.” Keil beamed with the honor. “I was once the literato’s assistant and archivist and the executor of his estate, and now, as you noted, I’m honored to become the curator of his memorial museum as well.” He opened palms that they might appreciate the wonders of the space around them.

  Keil’s words, his manner, his very being resonated sincerity.

  How unconscionably vicious Shail seemed in that moment, to have chosen such a man for his pawn. Ean felt his hands trying
to curl into fists—every instinct shouted for him to balance the scales somehow and free an innocent man from Shail’s misappropriation.

  “The Palmers generously purchased this building from the university and donated it to our foundation,” Keil was telling Rafael while Ean was waging a difficult battle with his conscience, “along with the funds to make the necessary renovations, and the Order of Arcane Scholars donated additional artifacts for our collection.” He shook his head, looking proud yet thoughtfully bemused, as if marveling at the abounding miracle of philanthropy. “The community has truly rallied in support of our dearly departed literato, who was, I must say, a friend to many.”

  Ean was staring tragically at him.

  Instead of a whitewashed museum, he was seeing a moonlit gallery choked with smoke, hearing fourth-strand alarms resounding around him, and tasting the blood that stained the currents as deeply as his own hands; recalling that night when Arion had waged an inner battle between fury and futility while his sword claimed the lives of brilliant men and women—lest the Enemy use them as pawns against their cause. Arion had been drenched to his elbows in the blood of the Hundred Mages, but his conscience had been drowning in it. He’d seen the Enemy in every one of those gazes as he’d fought them, bested them, decimated them...

  And here the bastard was again, piping his way down the exact same path, leading who knew how many countless innocents in blithe ignorance towards the abyss.

  Ean’s nail’s cut into his palms—a sharp, clean pain compared to the ache in his chest. How many more innocents would Shail be commandeering into ruin?

  Disintegrating this poor wretch will only intensify your guilt, Ean.

  Rafael’s gentle interjection drew Ean’s attention back to the present, whereupon he realized the currents were swarming around him and he was holding elae and deyjiin within a flint spark of combustion.

  Shocked—and simultaneously relieved that he was still within the safety corridor and out of reach of Shail’s wards—Ean forced a slow exhale and let his power drain off.

  But the drawing of such power must’ve set off some kind of unseen alarm, because in the same moment that Ean was releasing elae, the prince saw a shift in Keil’s eyes.