The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  Rafael acknowledged his droll tone with a twitch of a smile. “I regret my knowledge is limited to what you might call Warlock lore.” His smile became somewhat drier. “That is, those indignities which Baelfeir groused rather incessantly about for a thousand years or more, by Alorin’s accounting, after Cephrael ousted us from the Realms of Light.”

  Ean walked to join Rafael’s side, being careful to avoid both hovering patterns and deyjiin-dripping wings. “I’d be interested in the timeline as you recall it.”

  The Warlock assumed a pensive expression. “I was elsewhere during the last centuries before our exile. Baelfeir always considered this world his personal domain. Warlocks were welcome here only if they swore fealty to him as lord.”

  “Lord of All Warlocks,” Ean murmured.

  Rafael disintegrated another pattern with his wand. Its evaporation made Ean’s ears pop. “Even so, a surprising number of us congregated on Alorin because Baelfeir was here.” Rafael turned him a look. “Don’t fool yourself, Ean. Baelfeir is a compelling personage whose charisma is undeniable.”

  He moved among the patterns, ostensibly seeking another of interest to him. “Baelfeir could manifest in a way that was unique among us. Many Warlocks were all too willing to give him their oaths.”

  Ean followed Rafael with his gaze. “Manifest how?”

  Rafael stopped before a floating pattern swirling violently with deyjiin. He tapped his wand against it, and a waterfall of dissolving energy cascaded down. He fixed his gaze on Ean through the veil of sparkling silver ash. “Solidly.”

  This word held enormous significance for Rafael.

  Ean sensed it in the Warlock’s thoughts; in deeply stacked layers of rationale and reasoning that informed Rafael’s perspective but only obscured Ean’s. The one thing that stood out clearly to him was that Warlocks equated solidity to power, only...

  “Only you’re solidly manifesting now.” Ean met Rafael’s gaze as the last of the disintegrating pattern shed its embers. “Your forms are as solid as Baelfeir’s ever were...and you don’t know why.”

  “Mmm...” Rafael turned to investigate the back of the room, which remained hidden in shadows. “I have some theories.”

  He trailed a forefinger beneath his chin while strolling along, now disintegrating the patterns he passed by simply moving through them. “We all presumed Baelfeir’s solidity was evidence of the power he commanded. He did nothing to disabuse us of this notion, of course.”

  Rafael waved his wand absently and half a dozen patterns evaporated with varying static puffs and pops. One went out in a flash of eerie green light.

  “Perhaps he didn’t know himself.” Then he turned his head to fix his jewel-black gaze decisively on Ean. “But I think that unlikely.”

  Ean slowly followed through the safe channel of Rafael’s wake, trying to piece together his own knowledge with the thorny perceptions Rafael was sharing with him. “So...Baelfeir isn’t as powerful as you thought?”

  Rafael stopped before a portal that stood open to Shadow, very much like the one Tanis had described.

  “On the contrary, Ean,” his gaze appeared distantly fixed on some far past...or future. “I think he is more powerful than any of us imagined.”

  Ean stopped beside him and asked cautiously, “Could you defeat him?”

  Rafael focused upon him, suddenly intent. “You would be wise not to elect Baelfeir as an enemy, Ean.”

  “I have no intention of doing so, Rafael.”

  The Warlock arched a brow. “You have some intention of it.”

  Ean flashed a culpable grin. “Not the way you’re envisioning it.” He returned his gaze to the portal...and frowned. So far, every step had only taken him deeper into the mystery that was Shailabanáchtran, with no light of understanding shining anywhere.

  Ean scrubbed at his head. “Shail keeps an open gate into Shadow?”

  “Not into Shadow.” Rafael swirled his wand dismissively at the darkness. “This is a geodesic continuum displaying a balanced field equation.”

  Ean blinked. “A what?”

  Rafael smiled. “A bridge connecting through Shadow to elsewhere in this realm.”

  “He dredged a ley line through Shadow?” Ean tried to reason through that conundrum. “Why go to all that trouble when he could easily summon a portal?”

  “I would like to say arrogant indolence, but I suspect the truth is more complex.” Rafael twitched his wand before the portal again. “This bridge forms a continuity loop.”

  “Okay. Whatever that means.” Ean only saw darkness. “Where do you think it goes?”

  Rafael turned to him wearing a devious smile. “Why don’t we find out?”

  As it happened, the tunnel opened onto a large obsidian chamber whose high ceiling was lost in darkness and whose walls were worked all over with inverteré patterns. The currents in the place swirled with an iridescent char, as ash within oil, while the second strand carried a verdigris that looked disturbingly like rust.

  Ean moved further into the chamber and—

  Froze.

  Shailabanáchtran was reclining on a velvet-upholstered couch, his long frame garbed in crimson silk, hands clasped across his chest, eyes closed, mimicking remarkably the position of his doppelganger enshrined in Faroqhar. Both Malorin’athgul and couch looked oddly incongruous there in that place of dark patterns and turbulent currents.

  Beyond the immobile immortal stood a long table serving as a desk. Tall bookcases lined the walls, every shelf jammed with ancient tomes or scrolls, and beyond these—two men talking in angry tones.

  Ean’s Haarken was out of practice, but he recalled enough of the language of the Danes to get the gist of their conversation.

  “...cannot see anything to indicate it,” the older of the two men was saying. He wore a cloak bound by a chain of bronze links and a circlet around his thinning grey hair.

  The younger man, who appeared not much older than Ean, though he wore the gold circlet of a Daneland king, was pacing in the middle of the chamber. Clearly, they couldn’t see beyond some illusion or they would’ve noticed Ean’s arrival.

  The young king looked up and down, as at a wall. “I tell you, there used to be a room here. It’s where he worked and studied!”

  A rumble emitted from deep in the earth. Ean thought he felt a tremor far below his feet.

  The pacing king drew up short, and the two men exchanged a grim look, whereupon the elder, reading something in the younger’s expression, said, “Surely you don’t think he’s causing these earthquakes?”

  The young king’s gaze smoldered. “I think he’s capable of anything.”

  The older man watched the younger one return to pacing. His wrinkled brow held many furrows, with different concerns planted in each. “This witchlord cannot be trusted, jarl,” he said in a tired voice, sounding a common chant. “Perhaps he had you bewitched when last you thought you came here.” His tone strongly encouraged the jarl to accept this answer.

  The jarl paced a few more times. Then he uttered an oath that Ean didn’t understand and spun away, growling, “Damn the man to Balen’s hell!”

  They left.

  Ean looked back to Shail’s reclining form, feeling unnerved. He half expected him to rise up at any moment and couldn’t quite disconnect the real shell from the dead one lying in Faroqhar.

  He looked to Rafael. “How much time do you think we have?”

  “Minutes.”

  “I think I can give us an hour.”

  “An hour would be a beginning.”

  Ean grunted at the understatement. There were hundreds of books piled on shelves, tables and floor. It would take months to read everything Shail had accumulated.

  Still, a beginning was where everything...began.

  So, Ean hauled in the third strand like a team of horses and forced it down from a gallop to a laborious, struggling plod.

  Thereafter, gravity dragged at his every motion, while the waterwheel of the second strand str
ained against a sudden blockage and the heartbeat of the first drummed a slow, sluggish pulse.

  Rafael wandered over to Shail’s sleeping form. “I’ll erect a veil to alert us when he returns to this body. How quickly can you summon a portal?”

  Ean watched the Warlock crossing the room, feeling the meticulous countdown in his every exhale. “How much time can you give me?”

  “Three, four seconds at the most.”

  “Ah, an absolute eternity.”

  In truth, Ean had never timed how long it took him to tear the fabric of the realm, but he certainly couldn’t worry about it just then.

  While Rafael constructed his alarm, Ean moved to the worktable. The map spread along its length was a duplicate of the one in the laboratory, except...

  “No, not a duplicate.” Ean noticed important differences in the placement of the dots on this map and was glad he’d taken the time to memorize the other one.

  He studied the altered placements, puzzled as to why some dots were in slightly different places and others absent altogether...

  Then he had it.

  Shail, you bastard. I wish you weren’t so brilliant.

  “By Cephrael’s great book,” he breathed aloud, “they moved.” He looked up at Rafael with portent large in his gaze. “The second cataclysm moved some of the Quorum’s temples.”

  Rafael approached. With his gleaming chest of crackled gold and that glowing ruby between his brows, he looked magnificently suited to that place made for dark witchcraft. The currents swirled around him, smoky telltales of combative powers.

  Another rumble rose from the depths of the earth. That time Ean was sure the floor trembled.

  Rafael stopped beside Ean and looked over the map. “Your explanation makes sense. Though they had a different understanding of the nature of power at that time, the Quorum frequently built their temples on welds in the world’s pattern.”

  Ean crossed his arms, thinking fast. “That other map must be a decoy—for Pelas or anyone unlucky enough to find their way into Shail’s lab. Ten to nothing he’s placed traps at every one of those places marked with a dot, just on the off-chance that Pelas decided to visit—or I suppose, myself, though I won’t pretend to imagine Shail thinks of me as much of a threat.”

  “More to his error,” Rafael murmured.

  Ean frowned back at the map. “But this one...this is the real map. It tells us where he’s been.”

  Shail had chosen the universal key of X’s to mark places he’d eliminated and circles demarking ones still needing investigation, or possibly where investigation was underway. Others with no marks beside them must’ve still required study and exploration.

  But why? What was he hoping to find in thousands-year-old temples, most of which had been reduced to rubble twenty-five hundred years ago?

  Or had they?

  Earthquakes had been known to alter the paths of rivers. It only followed that such a massive kinetic disturbance as the infamous second cataclysm could also alter the magnetic ley lines of the world grid. If the welds themselves had shifted, dragging the temples with them...

  Ean had proof that it could happen. The island of Tiern’aval had been transported into T’khendar when the welds between the realms were twisted and closed off.

  So the temples might still exist, just in very different locations from those listed on any map.

  “Your logic is sound,” Rafael said.

  Ean exhaled a contemplative breath and looked around, wondering where to begin...whereupon a single book caught his eye, for it singularly remained wrapped in a protective suede covering while others sat open and stacked haphazardly upon each other.

  Rafael, by the same deductive logic, selected this book to inspect.

  The leather cover creaked as he opened it. The vellum pages within were nearly translucent. Obsidian eyes scanned quickly across the words scribed in a neat hand. “It is written in Old Alaeic,” he murmured, turning another page. “Do you know this language?”

  “Arion did.”

  “Some light reading for you, then.” Rafael handed the book to Ean and selected another.

  Shail appeared to have marked a place in the journal with a black ribbon. Ean hooked a wooden stool with the fifth and hauled it across the room. Perching on the edge, he opened the book to the indicated page.

  At first, his eyes made no sense of the alphabet scrawled there, but the more he ran his gaze across the lines, the more the words began to take the shape of meaning in his thoughts.

  By the time he’d scanned the page five times, he could read all of the words. Their story made him cold.

  The others have stopped listening to me. My concerns fall upon dead ears, my warnings go unheeded.

  The Other is dying. I’m certain he’s speaking the truth in this at least. This is the only truth I’m certain of.

  His orders cause rife conflict and reek of desperation. Into the maelstrom of his plans we’ve all been tumbled, but some could still reach safer waters. Only...

  I’m not sure there are safer waters to tread any longer.

  He says we must tear through within a matter of days, that he cannot survive any longer without harvesters. He says his power is fading, yet he harbors a cache of patterns the likes of which even the elders of our Order could not have imagined. After all he’s given us, many would castrate themselves simply to gain his graces. They follow blindly.

  He claims that rending the aether to Shadow will revive him and has been instructing us in ways to do so. He doesn’t know any more than we do. We’re all grasping at straws.

  I do not trust his motives.

  The Adzik Misharem has sent a hundred brothers to take our sacred history of the event to the Shaido dō Avinashaya daré Bhasaguhāni but

  Ean looked up. “Shaido dō Avinashaya daré Bhasaguhāni,” he said slowly, trying to sound out the complicated vowels. “Do you know this name?”

  Rafael was reading a different book. “It’s not Old Alaeic.” He set the book aside and chose another from the stack on Shail’s table. “Sounds Ravestani, though it could as easily have been Haarken after your embarrassing attempt at pronunciation.”

  Giving him a flat look, Ean turned the journal around and showed him the words.

  Rafael read them, then glanced up with a smile. “Definitely Ravestani.”

  “Who spoke Ravestani?”

  With a slight frown, Rafael looked over the map. Then he tapped a gilded finger on a large landmass in the east. “Avatar, it would appear.”

  Wondering where Shail had found such a book, Ean opened the cover and read the inscription there. The journal had belonged to a man named Aziah Vornamundi, Archimandrite of some temple whose name meant nothing to Ean.

  But the wax seal beneath this inscription showed a pattern he’d seen before—the symbol of the Quorum of the Sixth Truth.

  Intrigued, he resumed reading.

  I fear they will never survive the trek. With our temples in ruin, they must travel the land route. Our members are being hunted, our Order shattered. We may all be dead before

  Ean.

  Ean felt the vibration the instant Rafael said his name.

  A breath before the Warlock dispersed into the aether.

  A split-second before Shail launched up off the couch, swinging his arms as at a swarm of bees.

  Ean tore the fabric.

  Split-seconds passed as Shail cleansed himself of Rafael’s illusion. Then his dark eyes found Ean, and his expression turned thunderous.

  Ean waggled the journal at him meaningfully, flashed a taunting grin and stepped into Shadow.

  He closed the tear to the thunder of Shail’s infuriated roar.

  Forty-two

  “You are my sun, my moon, my stars.

  You are my first lord, owner of my heart.”

  –The Song of Angharad,

  Excerpted from The Varahunaiya, a famous Kandori legend

  Gydryn val Lorian adjusted the scarf protecting his face and ducked
his head against the flying sand while he pondered the ramifications of commitment.

  The chill autumn wind abraded his legs and tore at his cloak, seeking entry to softer parts. From his horse’s position atop the dune, he could see the line of his army snaking between arid, russet hills. Beneath his horse’s hooves, the sand shifted and ran in rivulets down the side of the dune, only to be stolen off into the air by the wind.

  Commitment.

  Gydryn had many times lectured his sons on commitment’s merits when they’d failed to complete a task he’d assigned them. His lords had received a similar talk when he’d noticed them spending too much time in the country and not enough time leading it.

  His unwavering views on commitment had necessitated Dannym’s involvement in Radov’s war—that is: his commitment to honor a pact of unity forged by his ancestors; his commitment to fight against the Prophet Bethamin’s meteoric rise; his commitment to avenge his lost sons.

  But the fortitude required to honor those commitments paled next to the commitment needed to lead thousands of men a hundred miles through the desert without recourse to cities or aid. Or a well.

  And Gydryn had committed all of them to this course. The only way out now was across endless sands and empty plains bristling with bandits, poisonous snakes and Saldarian scorpions—oh, and the insectoid variety of scorpions, too—and surviving these, up and over a gnarled mountain ridge to reach the Forest of Doane and finally, Jai’Gar willing, the Seam. Then the hard part would begin.

  Commitment. It was the glue that sealed determination to purpose, the tether ensuring he stayed the course, no matter what avalanche threatened to tear him off the path.

  As his men wound their way through the wind-scoured valley, Gydryn recalled another day when the hawk of commitment had been circling....

  %

  “That’s not going to work, you know.”

  Gydryn let his horse slide back down the scree slope to find surer footing again. He exhaled a breath of frustration, then craned his neck back to look up and see...

  Raine’s truth, she was something to see.

  The maiden lay draped along the edge of a boulder whose lengthy face extended out over the path he was attempting to climb—or...at least, failing rather miserably at coercing his horse into climbing.