The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  He scooped up the pebble gently within his protection, just as the mind itself went dark.

  ***

  The first thing Sebastian noticed when he regained consciousness—besides the fact that he wasn’t dead—was the pounding in his skull. A smith using his head as a hammer against an anvil would’ve been a pleasant experience by comparison.

  He heard a distant sound, which provided a momentary distraction from the obscene throbbing. It took an embarrassing span of heartbeats before he recognized the sound as a moan escaping his own throat.

  He forced his eyes to open and struggled to blink away the detritus clinging to them. His lids were slow in complying, heavy. His eyeballs felt charred. Even slower to comply was his vision, which took the Demon Lord’s own time focusing itself.

  Finally, he regained enough clarity to notice he was lying with his face pressed into the dirt and drooling a little. An excruciating effort of will rolled his body over onto his back. He lay there then, breathing shallowly, while the world spun and sickness threatened.

  Well, this was what he got for trying to usurp the elemental power of the planet to hold back a...

  What the hell had happened?

  Trying to recall his last few moments of consciousness elicited a grimace. Moving his arm, a wince. Pushing himself up on one elbow to look around, an exorbitant groan.

  Moonlight shone down from an unnaturally clear sky. Rhys was lying beside him with his face mashed into the soil, but his chest was rising and falling. And beyond Rhys...

  Sebastian’s first instinct was to wonder if the storm had tumbled them all the way to the moon.

  He gazed across nothing but flat, earthen expanse until his strained eyes hit up against the hulking darkness of the Prophet’s acropolis, several miles distant.

  The coliseum was gone. The entire forest was gone. It was like a god had taken his broom and in one sweep erased trees, ruins and every living thing.

  Whereupon, Sebastian realized that this is precisely what must have happened.

  He was marginally prepared, then, when the Prophet appeared out of the night, coming towards him.

  Darshan wore a long white coat, luminous in the moonlight, and seemed very much the god walking his domain. He glowed like a star.

  Sebastian instinctively summoned his shield—

  And received a hard slap of rebuke from the lifeforce for his impudence.

  The pain in his head nearly toppled him. He braced his other hand in the raw earth while his vision swam and his stomach heaved. By the time the dizziness faded, the Prophet was standing over him.

  Sebastian looked up to see the floor-length folds of the Prophet’s white coat undulating faintly with his power. The air surrounding him became electric, and every labored breath Sebastian took brought a charged static into his lungs.

  He sprouted gooseflesh from head to toe.

  Sebastian braced himself. But after a few heartbeats of ill anticipation, he realized that the immortal probably wasn’t planning to erase him from the aether, since he could’ve done that from a mile distant. That’s when his brain finally started functioning again, and he reached some fast conclusions.

  The prince craned his neck back to meet Darshan’s gaze. “I shouldn’t have survived that storm.”

  “No,” the Malorin’athgul agreed.

  Sebastian nodded, his suspicions confirmed. “Well then...” he winced as he extended an arm, “want to give me a hand up?”

  Darshan bent and hauled Sebastian to his feet.

  Once he was certain he wasn’t going to fall immediately down again, the prince slowly rearranged his garments, then lifted an admittedly baffled gaze to Darshan. “I guess...thanks are in order.”

  “But unnecessary. Ean would’ve been wroth with me if I’d let his older brother come to harm.”

  Sebastian froze.

  “Yes,” the immortal said in answer to the shock blanching Sebastian’s expression, “I recognize you from Ean’s mind. You’re never very far from his thoughts.”

  “From Ean’s...” Sebastian had to make a conscious effort to keep himself upright.

  Was he actually still unconscious and dreaming? Or had he passed into the afterlife, but a macabre version of it, where everything was turned on its head? He sort of scraped out, “How do you know my brother’s mind?”

  “We are bound.”

  Sebastian stumbled back. His body suddenly felt like overcooked noodles, and his mind was screaming for understanding. “Bound,” he croaked.

  The faintest twitch of a smile hinted on Darshan’s lips. “You and I are brothers-by-binding—I believe that is the term.”

  Shade and darkness! Had that actually been humor from the Prophet Bethamin? Sebastian gaped at him from the relative safety of five staggering paces away.

  His mind was reeling, but he had enough sense to recognize that the immortal had said, ‘we are bound,’ not, ‘he is bound to me,’ or, ‘I have bound him.’ These were important distinctions in a wielder’s vernacular.

  Still, any of the latter would’ve been easier to believe.

  “You’re...bound,” Sebastian managed again, hoarse with disbelief as much as the ash that still clogged his lungs, “to my brother Ean?”

  Darshan folded hands behind his back. “If it’s any consolation, it was Ean’s idea.”

  “I see,” Sebastian said, though he didn’t at all.

  He knuckled his forehead while disbelief bounced through his thoughts. His overtaxed credulity sought any factor to aid comprehension—that is, until his thoughts bounced to Isabel...whereupon even such an impossibility as this suddenly made sense.

  And then...everything made sense.

  Isabel. Of course it was Isabel. Who else could have predicted such an improbable shift of events?

  All the tension bled out of Sebastian on a slow exhale. Darshanvenkhátraman had bound with his brother, and as incredible as it seemed, if Darshan was allied with Ean, then in the very least, he was not their enemy.

  Sebastian focused back on the immortal. A smile found its way to his eyes. “How is my little brother, then?”

  The slightest furrow notched Darshan’s brow. “Distant. He travels with the Warlock Rafael, chasing a pattern of consequence.”

  Sebastian blinked at him. And the revelations just keep coming! He pushed a hand through his hair, dislodging a flurry of ash, then scratched at the back of his head. “So...Ean is bound to a Malorin’athgul and traveling with a Warlock...sounds about right.”

  Darshan looked him over curiously. “Might I ask what you’re doing here, Prince of Dannym? Surely not seeking Ean.”

  Sebastian dropped his hand and turned a frown around the desolated plain. “Dore’s plague. He was making an army of eidola.”

  “Yes, I have ended that now.”

  “So I assumed from the storm of unmaking that nearly...”

  “Unmade you?”

  Sebastian gazed at him uneasily. “That’s right.”

  The immortal shrugged a shoulder. “The currents needed to be cleansed.”

  “And the forest, too, evidently.”

  Sebastian turned a stare off into the night, taking in the great swath of cleared earth that had been forest and ruins only minutes ago, putting together the puzzle pieces of cause and consequence, trying to judge Darshan’s purposes.

  “I just have to ask,” he posed after a fast deliberation, “are we...are you on our team now?”

  Darshan’s gaze shifted towards the west. The movement of his attention was as discernable as a beacon light swinging across the sea. “A force of eidola travels distant from here. They are not bound to me, or I could sever their link to life.”

  Sebastian followed Darshan’s gaze towards the dark horizon. “Where are they?”

  “In the Dhahari.”

  “How many?”

  Darshan looked back to him. “Hundreds.”

  The rest of Dore’s army.

  Sebastian suddenly recalled the tracing patte
rn he’d thrown in those last desperate moments before the wave of unmaking hit. He tested his perception, and...

  Somehow Fortune had favored him, for he perceived the creature.

  Epiphany willing, that eidola would lead him to the others.

  When Sebastian focused back on Darshan, the immortal was watching him with the Prophet’s penetrating gaze. Friend or foe, he still had Bethamin’s way of looking through you into the next century; yet for the first time, Sebastian saw no shadows of annihilation there, only interest.

  “Is there anything you’d like me to relay to your brother?”

  Battling the surreality of the moment, Sebastian answered, “Tell him...I’m walking my path.”

  “Yes, I see that you are.” Darshan gave him a cryptic smile. “Good luck, Prince of Dannym.” He turned and retreated into the night.

  Sebastian stared after him.

  Then he mentally slapped himself with a growled, Pull it together, man! and bent to rouse Rhys with a flow of the first that made his eyes ache.

  The captain started awake.

  He seemed to undergo the same process of reorientation that Sebastian had experienced. When he got to the part where he noticed the world had physically altered, Rhys spun a stare at Sebastian. “What in thirteen hells happened?”

  “The god of these lands did some housecleaning. Come, Captain.” He extended a hand to help Rhys to his feet. “We’ve got eidola to hunt.”

  ***

  In one of the grand halls of his temple residence, Darshan addressed his Marquiin.

  His assistants had helped them, per his instructions.

  These Adepts, whom Dore had enchained behind layers of stone since he couldn’t enchain their thoughts, had been bathed and fed, and any of their other needs tended to. They no longer wore the gauzes of the Marquiin but the soft, woolen robes of his former acolytes.

  As Darshan walked to the front of the room, he looked across these men he’d harmed with the intention of help and knew the extent of his misjudgment.

  Agitation as much as sheer force of will was holding many of the Adepts upright. Most appeared not to have eaten since his departure. They uniformly gazed out through the mask of his tattoos, while their eyes shone with every shade between colorless and char.

  He’d asked Kjieran what he should say to them.

  Kjieran had replied, the truth.

  Now, as Darshan stood before them, he hoped to no longer present the image of the Prophet but something more. Something purer.

  Every eye fixed on him.

  He took a deep breath and intoned, “You have been wronged.” He let the words sink in, let each man find his own resonance of truth in what was left of their minds. “Now I must find a way to make amends, not only to you but to this realm whose posterity I have endangered.”

  Darshan moved into the crowd. Some of the Adepts tentatively reached for him. Others shrank away. One truthreader stood, wavering in place, his features constricted and radiating numerous conflicting emotions.

  Darshan took this Adept’s face between his hands. Upon his touch, the patterns surrounding the truthreader’s grey eyes came alive with silver-violet light. The Adept gasped.

  “I am going to change these patterns,” he told him—told all of them. “I’m not yet sure how I will accomplish it.”

  Beneath his hands, the truthreader trembled. Tears fled his eyes.

  Darshan released the Adept and looked around at the others. Despair colored their gazes more often than hope. “Some of you may not survive this changing,” he admitted, “but know that your sacrifice will result in the freeing of others. And know this: it is my intent that none of you shall perish beyond Epiphany’s reach. No matter what happens, I will see that you are free to find the Returning.”

  The Adept before him inhaled a shuddering breath and dropped to his knees. Others cried out or murmured prayers. Their tears shimmered with relief.

  “We will make a new movement,” Darshan told them then, turning to take in every face, to meet every gaze, to make a troth with every soul. “We will compose together a new doctrine that teaches the equilibrium I and my brothers were created to provide. We will help this world find harmony with the cosmos again.”

  One by one, the Adepts fell to their knees before him. Some looked stunned; many were openly weeping. Darshan surveyed their minds and was pleased with the sense of purpose he found among them.

  “Let us begin.”

  ***

  The following morning, the denizens of Tambarré woke to an unnaturally clear day, an acropolis skyline dramatically altered...and a dome of iridescent light completely enclosing the Prophet’s alcázar.

  Some of the more adventurous of the local residents tested the nature of the dome. Arrows shot into it sizzled into ash on contact. Apples and other fruit slung into it turned to fragrant mist.

  Word spread quickly, and the people of Tambarré soon gave the dome a wide berth. No one tried to approach the Prophet’s mountain.

  News of the storm that had vaporized the forest and ruins spread faster than dawn’s light could claim the world. By the time the scent of bread was wafting through the café district, the black flags of plague had been lowered from Tambarré’s walls and the city’s gates reopened to commerce.

  Within a span of days, it was as though the alcázar and its once terrifying Prophet had never existed.

  Which was exactly what the Prophet intended.

  Forty-one

  “The knowledge that has been lost far outweighs that which remains.”

  –Liam van Ghellar, Endoge of the Sormitáge

  ‘Who is working the lifeforce? You or your body?’

  Ean stared at the place where Rafael had passed through the wall of Shail’s apartments, sensing that he’d just encountered a pivotal truth, yet unable to attach it to deeper understanding.

  Even so, it occurred to Ean that this idea that one’s shell was simply a pattern was exactly the concept Shail must’ve worked from in creating the dead literato for his memorial display. Of course the dead man looked exactly like Shail; the Malorin’athgul had crafted a new shell from the selfsame pattern he’d used to construct his original one.

  Rafael’s head emerged from the false wall leading into Shail’s laboratory. “Ean, you will want to see this.” He promptly vanished back through the illusion of plaster.

  Shelving these thoughts for later deliberation, Ean followed the Warlock into Shail’s now rather infamous laboratory. Darkness greeted him, disrupted only by the violet-silver gleam of deyjiin trapped in patterns floating in the air.

  The room appeared as Pelas and Tanis had both described. Patterns of all types floated on strings of power—some inverteré, some elae, others dragging deyjiin out of dormancy, and still others whose origins Ean couldn’t place, but which brought a cold unease to his chest, for they looked too akin to the patterns currently adorning his wife’s body. Chaos patterns, then.

  The room was as disturbing to Ean’s equilibrium as Rinokh’s storm of unmaking in T’khendar.

  Untold energies churned the current into violent waves. Here they rushed; there they formed a vortex; combatant powers made pinwheels that shed kinetic sparks into the aether. The hairs on Ean’s arms were standing on end.

  Rafael’s wings spread out as the Warlock leaned over one of the worktables. Deyjiin washed down off his wings, clung to the outline of some kind of force field surrounding the table, and cascaded from there into mist across the floor.

  Trying not to think of Pelas’s misadventures in this selfsame room, Ean joined Rafael tableside, taking care to stay clear of the force field.

  A map lay open across most of the table. Books and other objects pinned the edges, leaving plenty of space for the intricately inked sketch, which depicted the realm’s three main continents in painstaking detail.

  Rivers, forests, mountains, lakes, coastlines...it must’ve taken decades to construct.

  “If a human had created it, yes.” Rafael
glanced over at him, having caught this thought. “But this map could only have been made by Shailabanáchtran’s hand.” He indicated a mountain range whose many branches had been exquisitely sketched. “Birdseye view, you see?”

  Ean nodded. “What are the black marks?”

  They dotted every continent from Agasan to Avatar. While some spots seemed to demark cities he recognized, such as Tambarré, most lay outside of known metropolises.

  Rafael conjured an obsidian wand and used it to point at the dots of black ink. “Yes...it took me a moment’s recollection—some of the geography has shifted—but I believe I recognize some of these locations.”

  A deadly pattern of deyjiin floated towards Rafael. He swatted at it inconsequentially, and the discarded pattern floated off on some unseen tide.

  “I cannot be certain about these,” he motioned to several dots speckling the eastern reaches of the Agni Sagara, Avatar’s fire desert, “but I believe some of the others might’ve been the locations of temples built by the Quorum of the Sixth Truth.”

  Ean straightened to stare at him. “The Quorum.”

  It was the last thing he’d expected, and yet many of Dore Madden’s strongholds had been built atop Quorum ruins: the Prophet’s alcázar in Tambarré, Tal’Afaq... Ivarnen.

  Ean knew they had only minutes before Shail would come in search of them, so he committed the temple locations to memory, noting as he did that some of the dots had symbols inked beside them.

  This done, he pushed hands in his pockets and looked around again.

  Rafael had moved on and was studying the dangling patterns. How he managed to keep his wings from touching any of them was a miracle of physics.

  Ean asked him, “Why is Shail so interested in the Quorum of the Sixth Truth?”

  “I cannot say. The Quorum were a mighty order of thousands of fifth strand Adepts—though they didn’t refer to themselves as Adepts at the time, as I recall.” He touched his obsidian wand to one of the floating patterns and it evaporated in a puff of grey-green smoke. Rafael frowned at it. “This was before Cephrael gave the secrets of the Sobra to humanity, of course.”

  “Right. The secrets to building universes. Tracking.”