The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  “The flowers of broom, meadowsweet and oak,” he noted, though clearly no explanation was needed, for tears had filled her eyes. “The oak flowers were particularly challenging to find in the middle of the night.”

  She brought the bouquet to her nose. “When did you know?”

  He chuckled. “Sadly, not nearly so immediately as you, bright lady.”

  Then he dragged her close and kissed her, which he’d been wanting to do from the first moment of their meeting.

  Never a day passed when he didn’t feel the same.

  %

  “Sire, we’re a bit exposed here.”

  Gydryn hauled his thoughts back from the far north to find Duke Loran val Whitney sitting his horse a few paces behind him on the dune.

  Below, his men had cleared the ravine. In the east, a storm was darkening the horizon and heading their way. They’d need to make camp before it hit.

  He nodded wordlessly to Loran, and they heeled their horses into motion down the dune.

  Commitment.

  Gydryn had been committed to Errodan from the first moment their eyes met on the slopes of Caider Morh. Perhaps their souls had been fated to find one another on that hillside, fated to love one another. Their love had surely never wavered, but their lives together had not been easy.

  Perhaps easy wasn’t part of the bargain Fate offered.

  Gydryn thought of Trell’s words, spoken with such earnest feeling—that he wouldn’t have traded even one moment of his past, for those steps had brought him to where he stood today.

  Would Gydryn rather have had a different life—an easier life—if it meant living it without Errodan? He didn’t hesitate even an instant’s thought in his answer. Yet if Errodan had experienced even a fraction of what he’d been through since departing Calgaryn, he wouldn’t blame her if she’d lost faith in him.

  As his horse reached the plains and he pushed the animal into a canter, Gydryn tightened his hold on his reins and his commitment. Whatever came, whatever transpired, whatever dangers he had to face, commitment tethered him to his course.

  He would honor his promise and return with his army.

  Gydryn looked to the north and set his sights for home.

  Forty-three

  “One can never put too strong an emphasis

  on corrupting the next generation.”

  –The Eltanin Seat Mir Arkadhi

  ‘The strand is yours now, Franco. Protect it.’

  The Second Vestal’s parting words echoed in Franco’s head as he stepped off the Sylus node into Illume Belliel.

  It was early morning there, though it had been evening in T’khendar. Puffy clouds shone luminous in shades of pink-rose-gold-violet over the translucent blue of the dawn. Such a change from the pervasive storm he’d been enduring for countless weeks.

  My kingdom for a shower, Franco thought derisively. A man could only suffer sand in his underclothes for so long.

  It didn’t aid his sanity that the First Lord had asked him not to seek out Alshiba, saying she was safer where she was. But where was she, if not in the cityworld? Franco thought he would go mad from the speculation alone, especially since the last person he’d seen her with was Mir Arkadhi.

  The gardens of Alorin’s estate in the cityworld lay silent, the delicate petals of countless varieties of flowers still closed and slumbering. As Franco set off towards his own apartments within Alorin’s walled estate, his boots became damp with dew. He left sandy footsteps in the grass.

  ‘The First Lord’s contact says the Warlocks are scattered throughout the estates of any world whose Vestals they could capture and compel.’ Dagmar had told him this as he was briefing him on his mission. ‘Alorin’s estate, being empty of influential minds to overthrow, remains free from their dominion.’

  The Great Master had gone on to tell him that Niko van Amstel was setting up his own council while garnering support to overthrow the official one. Niko had apparently made friends of Warlocks and had the endless vaults of Eltanin backing him. It was only a matter of time before the rest of the thousand realms fell hostage to his argument, if not to his immortal henchmen. Franco imagined it was difficult to hold your political position when a Warlock was controlling your mind.

  He felt a twinge of discomfort upon this thought.

  In preparation for his return to Illume Belliel, Isabel had taught him how to shield his mind against a Warlock’s specific kind of compulsion, but the pattern was new to him, and he’d have to work it constantly as he carried out his mission.

  Franco let out his breath with a wince. My mission.

  Just one more mission likely to be fraught with peril, conducted under Björn van Gelderan’s banner. But this would be his first mission bearing the title Second Vestal of Alorin.

  In this, Franco knew a grave honor, a deep humility, and a weighty responsibility that hulked on his chest all night, making it hard to breathe and harder to sleep.

  He lifted his right hand to look at the large silver ring binding his third finger. Dagmar had placed the ring there as he’d said the words of abdication, of transition, and Franco had given the Vestal oath beneath Björn’s watchful gaze. He’d felt the binding take effect while his heart raced and his breath came shallowly.

  It wouldn’t matter what the Council said now—he was Alorin’s Second Vestal.

  By Cephrael’s Great Book!

  The very idea of it both thrilled and terrified him. Could he really live up to Dagmar Ranneskjöld’s legacy? Could he actually fill those boots? Could he do what needed to be done?

  He knew well enough what the others saw in him—Björn, Dagmar, Isabel. They saw his talent as he plus-crossed nodes and dredged ley lines through the aether. They saw the way his brothers of the strand had rallied to his name. They knew his potential better than he did.

  But they couldn’t see the shadows of guilt that still haunted him at times, especially when he looked at Isabel and realized with a cold shiver that he and the other Companions had been trying to kill her...that if not for Arion’s intervention, she might’ve died, and then where would they all have been?

  But Isabel and Björn had forgiven him for his part in the Companions’ attempted coup. Why couldn’t he forgive himself?

  Sometimes he recalled his days of alcohol-induced oblivion with a sort of nostalgia. He’d sacrificed decades of memory to a drunken haze.

  In retrospect, those years had been harder for not knowing what was to come...for always wondering what would happen when the First Lord finally Called him, waking every day to the fear that this day would be the day, perhaps his last day. Centuries of hiding what he’d done, truthbound against admitting it to anyone, isolated from honor, forced to live only with regret—the surest punishment. The First Lord had known what he was doing when he’d bound them thusly.

  That was part of it, to be sure. You didn’t spend hundreds of years excoriating yourself daily and just get over the habit within a few revolutions of the sun. But he was trying.

  Looking back now, Franco saw that when the Shade had come for him in Calgaryn, that had been the last day of his life...at least, the finale to the dissipated, disastrous, disconsolate life he’d been leading; the life of an Espial more keen to squander his talent than develop it.

  Well, the First Lord had certainly taken care of that for him, hadn’t he?

  The strand is yours now, Franco. Protect it.

  Franco really needed a stiff drink. And a shower. He might take the drink with him into the shower.

  He swept his hair back from his eyes and admitted a twinge of pride at what he’d accomplished, but as he pondered the mission ahead, he couldn’t help wondering if he might yet come to regret escaping from that sea cave with Immanuel di Nostri. The Returning would be a good deal kinder than a Warlock’s binding.

  Franco banged through the front doors to his townhouse and climbed the curving staircase in a rush. He’d been living in Alshiba’s mansion before everything went south. But he couldn’t
conceive of going there now—she occupied his thoughts enough as it was.

  He strode through his study and the attached drawing room into a large bed chamber. As he passed the four-poster pushed against the windows, he tried not to think of the many nights he’d lain in that bed envisioning Alshiba lying beside him.

  She’d uncovered something in him that he’d never known he possessed. Thirteen hells—she’d unearthed his honor from beneath the silt of all that regret.

  Reaching his bathing chamber, Franco stripped out of his clothes and stepped into the nacre-tiled shower. The pull of a cord brought hot water pouring down on his head. He’d never appreciated the miracle of indoor plumbing more than he did in that moment.

  While the heat melted the ache from sore muscles and the water washed the grit from his flesh, making a mud bath out of the water pooling at his feet, Franco heard again the First Lord’s parting words, his answer to Franco’s question:

  ‘What does it mean to win the game when our game encompasses thousands of worlds, millions of souls? We cannot think of it in ultimate terms of winning or losing, Franco. That’s too shallow a view. Instead we must align our intentions around the game’s purpose: to restore Balance. Now, if winning the game accomplishes that, we all win. If we lose the game but promote the restoration of the Balance, we still win.

  ‘You and I don’t have to survive this game, but we simply cannot fall short of that goal.’

  Save a thousand worlds. That’s all he was tasked with. No pressure.

  Franco laid his head against the tile and let the hot water pound down across his shoulders. He would’ve liked to have had Alshiba pinned naked between him and that wall. The idea of her in Mir Arkadhi’s hands...

  Shade and darkness. One minute he was lamenting having to save the world, the next fantasizing about his new superior, then worrying some other man had already laid claim to her. His thoughts needed a bloody chaperone.

  Franco pulled the cord to shut off the shower and stood there while the flow of water died to a dribble, trying to find some equilibrium. He grabbed a towel and pressed it to his face, closing his eyes, forcing himself to get a handle on a reality too surreal for words. Then he wrapped the towel around his hips and stepped from the shower.

  Where he froze.

  People were in his house.

  No, not people. Men. Probably armed. Very certainly with intent to harm.

  He could tell from a hundred nameless perceptions as much as from the way the currents of the second strand fibrillated with warning.

  Well, he hadn’t been totally idle during his lonely nights spent pining for Alshiba.

  Franco reached for elae’s second strand, his native strand, and activated the webwork of leis he’d spent so many lonesome evenings tracing throughout his home. Seeing shadows on the wall in the next room, he stepped to his right and vanished.

  ***

  Carian vran Lea stepped off the portal leading from the First Lord’s sa’reyth into T’khendar to be greeted by a starry sky and the luminous, dazzling lights of Niyadbakir.

  And Gwynnleth, seated on a bench beneath a glowing streetlamp, sharpening one of her short swords.

  A grin split Carian’s face before he could school it to the proper shape of indifference. “Hello there, birdie!”

  As she looked up from her work, her expression fell somewhat shy of the ecstasy he’d hoped to see. She stood and directed an ironic smile at him. “About time you showed up.”

  “I aim to please.” He looked her over with a puzzled grin. “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you, obviously. Why else would I be out here in the middle of the night?”

  “Preparing for ritual sacrifice?”

  “Don’t tempt me. Lady Isabel told me I wasn’t allowed to harm you under any circumstances.”

  “Any circumstances?” He looked her up and down suggestively. “Was she really that specific?”

  Gwynnleth held up her sword. “See this weapon? See how I’m putting in into its sheath?” She proceeded to do so.

  Carian grinned. “I can think of something else I’d like to see you sheathe, chickadee.”

  She leveled him a steely gaze. “And you wonder why she gave me an order not to harm you.”

  “Oh no, sweet skylark, I don’t wonder.”

  Gwynnleth grabbed up a knapsack sitting at her feet and slung it over one shoulder. “Move along, then. Let’s be about it.”

  “About what?”

  “Finding Franco Rohre.”

  Carian drew back slightly. “How’d you know I came here for Rohre?”

  Gwynnleth gave him flat look. “Lady Isabel, remember? I haven’t been sitting here since moonrise for my health.” She prodded him off down a path that ran adjacent to the hillside. “Rohre is in Illume Belliel. You’ll have to take us across the Sylus node.”

  “Isn’t that the one he cross-plussed? Wait—” Carian really stared at her as her words finally sank in. “Us?”

  “Lady Isabel thinks you might need me.”

  Carian made a mental note to thank the Lady Isabel with a gargantuan gift, like a blood sacrifice made of Niko van Amstel’s still beating heart, or perhaps his first-born child. He tossed Gwynnleth a meaningful grin. “Oh, I need you all right, my lusty lovebird.”

  From the way Gwynnleth’s hands started twitching at her sides, they were clearly itching to close around his throat already, which pleased Carian immensely. Ruffling Birdie’s feathers was one of his favorite pastimes.

  She exhaled a measured breath. “This is going to be harder than I thought.”

  “Speaking of hard—”

  “Stop.” She swung close and pressed her fingers to his lips. “Stop talking.”

  Then she turned and strode on. They continued in silence then, with the avieth taking purposeful strides and Carian gleefully admiring her ass.

  But that would last only for a minute or five, for eventually he would have to prepare himself for traveling between the realms.

  He’d never been to Illume Belliel. It wasn’t like anyone could just up and visit as they pleased. The welds connecting to the cityworld were regulated by gateway patterns so complex as to baffle even the greatest Nodefinders.

  And supposing you did make it through those gates, there were said to be other, more destructive patterns surrounding the nodecourts themselves, which would trigger upon the presence of anyone not wearing a ring.

  The Vestals could travel back and forth safely, courtesy of their oathrings, as could the Paladin Knights, via patterns embedded in their armor. Everyone else would meet a swift end.

  Carian had done a lot of foolhardy things in his life—including carting himself off to T’khendar in an attempt to rescue the Great Master, which had gained him naught but a run-in with Björn’s zanthyr and a truthbinding he still couldn’t get rid of—but he’d never been so fool as to invite himself to Illume Belliel.

  The Sylus node, though...according to Dagmar, Björn himself had dredged that ley line, which ran between Alorin’s estate in the cityworld and T’khendar. It wasn’t on any map. You couldn’t even find it on the world grid. The only way to find it was to already know where it was.

  To this end, Dagmar had taken Carian onto T’khendar’s Pattern and shown him the channel—shown off to him, he should say, Franco’s outstanding work in plus-crossing it. Now Carian wondered if the Great Master had shown him the portal for more than one reason.

  They were nearing the portal now, which stood in the middle of a field overlooking the city. To his Adept eye, the node appeared a glimmering sylph beckoning to a lover.

  Carian hitched up his britches. “Aren’t there supposed to be Warlocks where we’re going?” He recalled Dagmar mentioning something about them the last time they spoke in Dreamscape.

  “That’s the popular theory.” Gwynnleth’s tawny eyes spied him sidelong. “Worried?”

  “Nah. No reason to fear, chickadee. I’ll protect you.”

  She gave him
a withering look. “Lady Isabel says Alorin’s estate will be safe. The First Lord took precautions.”

  Carian grunted. “Of course he did. And that’s one more for the list.”

  “One more what?”

  Carian aimed a sidelong grin at her. “Fynnlar’s got a running wager with the drachwyr Balaji that he can find something the First Lord didn’t foresee.”

  “Okay, I’m intrigued. What happens when Fynn loses the bet?”

  “He becomes indentured to Balaji as his official wine taster for an unspecified length of time.”

  Gwynnleth arched both brows.

  “Yeah,” Carian grinned, “Fynnlar considers it a can’t-lose scenario.” He stopped them before the node. “We’re here, birdie.” He offered her his hand.

  Gwynnleth gave him a you’d-better-not-try-anything look and closed her fingers around his.

  Carian entwined their fingers like lovers and flashed a grin. “Safer this way.” Then he pulled her onto the node before she could punch him.

  A heady rush of worlds later, they stepped out into the dewy gardens of Illume Belliel beneath a dawn sky. Gwynnleth slipped her hand free of Carian’s, but he noticed that she hadn’t done it frostily, or with her usual, aggressive I-dare-you-to-test-my-patience-and-see-what-happens vibe. She was definitely into him.

  The Avieth looked around and spotted a residence beyond a line of trees. “That’ll be Franco’s place over there. Let’s go.” She started that way, taking long strides.

  Carian eyed her curiously as he followed. “How do you know your way around, birdie?”

  “Lady Isabel.” She turned him a bewildered glare. “Is there some aspect of she sees the future that you just can’t get through that thick skull of yours?”

  “If she really saw the future, she’d have warned me not to harm you,” Carian muttered.

  Gwynnleth snorted. It sounded suspiciously like, As if. “So...there are things you need to know.”

  “Like?”

  She angled him a frown. “Like the drachwyr were all cast forward in time—that is, except your lady love.”