The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  Eugenia gave him a smile of sweet venom. “If you were to stab your dagger into my thigh, Darren, I might put my dagger into your eye. Now, this would be an example of cause and consequence, not destiny.” Her condescending gaze scoured Darren, as cutting as her tone. “The Prophet speaks not of accountability, my dear ignorant son, only of the inevitability of our destinies.”

  Darren made some retort, but Stefan had closed his ears to their conversation.

  ‘...What is grand in mortal man is that he lives to die...’

  The Prophet clearly knew nothing about mortal man, for there was nothing grand about him.

  Every living thing in the realm served some purpose, save for Man. Man used. Man consumed. Man spread his festering seed like a plague across the land, tainting everything he touched, abusing, ravaging, giving nothing lasting in return. This was the only inevitability. One had but to look at his wife for evidence of this truth.

  For a moment, Stefan saw not the lake of shifting mist but a long table of milky marble and the Prophet, seated at its head...

  Bethamin sat with one hand resting on the table and his dark gaze resting on Stefan. The Prophet lifted a long finger and pointed it at him. “What do you seek from this alliance, Stefan, Duke of Morwyk? Power? Influence?... Vengeance?”

  Stefan felt the Prophet’s eyes boring into him, demanding the truth as if hooking it on the end of a fisherman’s line. He let it come. “Punishment.”

  Behind him, Eugenia rose from the couch and walked to a cabinet to pour herself a drink. Stefan watched her reflection in the window as she passed. She was a tall woman with chestnut hair and round hips, a fine figure even after four children. From behind, Eugenia might’ve been mistaken for Errodan val Lorian.

  Stefan always took his wife from behind.

  The study doors opened. The dark-haired eunuch who stood in the parting had a spider tattoo in the middle of his forehead and wore kohl liner around his dark eyes. His robe of crimson silk was patterned with the image of some tropical, long-necked bird. “Lord Duke, my mistress is pleased to inform you that your guest has arrived.”

  The eunuch stepped aside to allow Dore Madden to come scuffing into the room in too-big boots and a coat clearly tailored for a taller man.

  Stefan returned his gaze to the fog until the tattooed eunuch had closed the doors. Then a sort of empty hollow formed in his gut. It was the closest he ever came anymore to anticipation.

  “Well...is it true?”

  Madden wandered the room with his chin tucked into his chest. Stefan had never encountered an ambulatory man more possessed of the likeness of Death. The wielder stopped before a desk and plucked at an ink bottle on its stand. “We found no evidence that would lead us to conclude he’s alive.”

  Stefan could smell the rot of Madden’s dissembling from a mile distant. “That’s hardly an assurance. I thought you had hal’Jaitar in custody.”

  Madden flashed a heated stare at him. “Viernan knows nothing of the fate of Dannym’s king. As I told you before, if Gydryn val Lorian were alive, he would’ve sent word to his queen, and my spies would’ve learned of it.”

  Stefan grunted a dubious agreement. His own spies in Calgaryn had told him the same.

  “We’ve a larger problem than the whereabouts of Dannym’s dead king, Lord Duke. I got out of Viernan after much prodding that the Dannish army was amassing at Nahavand. This is why Radov needed your men to augment his attack on Raku.”

  “Was amassing.” The duke repeated.

  “You are savvy, Lord Duke. The army is now on the march.”

  Stefan arrowed a stare at him. “Led by whom?”

  “The Duke of Marion, logic would conclude. He and a contingent of knights vanished from Tal’Shira on the eve of the parley—another fact I only just learned from Viernan. Here we thought Loran val Whitney had perished along with his king. It appears Viernan was keeping many secrets from us.”

  “As we are from him.”

  “To be sure. To be sure. What allies can afford to trust one another in matters of treason?” Madden wandered over to the couch and stared down at Darren, who in turn pressed himself back into the cushion, wearing an expression of vague revulsion.

  Stefan wished his youngest son didn’t often look so vague.

  Eugenia demanded meanwhile, “How, pray, is this nebulous Dannish army on the march together when its battalions were supposedly scattered across the whole of M’Nador?”

  Stefan resented Eugenia imposing herself in matters suited to men, but he granted in this case that she had a point. “Yes, Madden, do explain this occurrence.”

  Like a vulture from a high peak, Madden studied Darren as he replied, “After much prodding, hal’Jaitar finally admitted to me that King Gydryn apparently gave secret orders to his men before he left for the parley. They were all instructed to abandon their positions and convene at the fortress of Nahavand, across the border in Akkadian-held lands, beyond the reach of the Nadori forces.”

  Stefan misliked the rapacious hunger with which Dore Madden was regarding his son. “Then Gydryn knew he was betrayed.”

  “We shall never know what the king may or may not have known. What matters, Lord Duke, is that Dannym’s army is intact and on the march. And where do you imagine those soldiers are heading but home to Calgaryn, posthaste?”

  Eugenia flung a poisonous stare at Stefan’s reflection. “Perhaps I am led astray, Stefan, my dear, but the untimely return of King Gydryn’s army may put a damper on your plans for siege.”

  Stefan’s eye twitched. “Leave us, Eugenia.” He said this without looking at his wife. Stefan always tried to avoid looking directly at his wife.

  Eugenia glanced to Dore Madden and back to him. “Surely, Stefan, at this late juncture—”

  “Remove yourself from my presence!” His words cracked in the bare-walled room.

  Eugenia gave them a twitching smile, lifted her skirts and departed.

  When the doors had closed once more, Stefan snarled, “I want them stopped. You promised me an army—empty promises, for here you stand with no army in sight!”

  Madden finally spun away from Darren, who heaved a shuddering exhale and wiped his nose.

  “The Prophet flatly refused to make the army,” Madden hissed, “despite his earlier agreement and my many appeals. One cannot account for the capriciousness of gods. I had to wait until he left the acropolis to build your army, but all is solved now, Lord Duke. It will be but a small further delay, I assure you. Nothing will stand in your way come the time.”

  “Except Gydryn val Lorian’s nearly ten thousand men!” Stefan worked the muscles of his jaw and stared hard at his reflection in the window.

  He barely recognized his own face anymore—his son looked more like him than he looked like himself. And yet...the shadows that dug hollows in his countenance had always been there. They’d merely been hiding beneath the plump idealism of youth.

  For a moment, Stefan saw not the hard, haggard lines of his face but the Prophet’s lashing gaze, close in view. For a moment, he felt the man’s long fingers closed again around his shoulder, and his tall form standing but a breath away, emanating winter’s bone-shattering chill.

  ‘If you would know my allegiance, you must know my truth, Stefan, Duke of Morwyk.’ Bethamin’s resonant voice had pinned Stefan to immobility as surely as the man’s hand had pinned his body. ‘Do you fear purification?’

  Stefan’s advisors had warned him that the Prophet fed on the souls of men, but he didn’t fear Bethamin’s Fire. Why should he, when he had no soul for it to consume?

  He’d looked deep into Bethamin’s dark eyes. ‘I fear nothing.’

  The Prophet had raked his gaze across Stefan and nodded. ‘I believe you, Lord Duke. We shall seal our alliance with Fire...’

  Stefan stifled a shudder.

  Too well, he recalled that lightning moment, when the Prophet had pressed his thumb to his forehead. He’d fallen into convulsions, battering his head against the st
one floor...

  That part he recalled not at all, though they’d told him later that he’d screamed for two days. He didn’t recall this either, though it had been a week before his voice had returned. He was certain, however, that the fever that had ravaged him for the next fortnight, scouring his core in search of his soul, had ultimately departed unfulfilled.

  Stefan had forgotten what it felt like to wake feeling rested; nightmares plagued his dreams. He no longer knew the sensation of warmth; now he kenned only the chill of a dark abyss, mental gorges dredged by the Fire’s passing, so cold and silent and deep that he dared not let his thoughts venture within them.

  He couldn’t even recall the passionate rationale that had driven him to seek the Eagle Throne back then, or why he’d wanted it so desperately that he’d treated with the Prophet Bethamin to gain it.

  But he knew why he wanted it now.

  Stefan focused back on his reflection in the glass to find Dore Madden’s cadaverous face looming behind his shoulder. He knew somehow that Madden had never experienced Bethamin’s ‘purification.’ That man’s madness hailed from some other plain of hell.

  Stefan settled a dangerous stare on the wielder via the window. Threatening the man’s life would prove fruitless, but deny him what he wanted most...

  “If my reinforcements aren’t ready when I reach Calgaryn,” Stefan said, low and ominous, “or if Gydryn’s army places one boot on Dannish soil...by Belloth’s unwholesome eye, Madden, I vow here and now, I will give my allegiance to Errodan, and your hope of siege will vanish like the mist beneath the sun.”

  Madden studied Stefan’s reflection with a twisted expression that might’ve been fury or might’ve been fear.

  He licked his lips. “Have I not advised you truly?” he whispered. “Have I not sent Ascendants and Marquiin to aid you in your endeavors? Am I not the one who first sent you to the Karakurt, to help you eliminate the youngest val Lorian prince, when in desperation you called to me?”

  “For all the good that accomplished.” It wasn’t lost on him that Dore Madden had been utterly indifferent to his appeals until Stefan had shown him the invitation announcing Ean val Lorian’s return to the mainland. “I lost a score of loyal men, well-placed within the King’s Own Guard, vanquished by legend and myth.”

  “But for the interference of the Fifth Vestal’s Shade, all would have gone as planned,” Madden groused. “Such could not have been predicted. But no matter, no matter. It is an imposition, this thing you ask of me, but I will eliminate the king’s army for you—call it a favor, a gesture of my good faith.”

  “I’ve heard this tune before,” Darren muttered from the safety of the couch.

  Madden flung a stiletto stare that silenced the boy.

  “How will you find him?” Stefan asked. “There are thousands of miles of desert between the Akkadian border and the sea.”

  “Ah...but the army marches north, Lord Duke.”

  Stefan swung a stare at him. “North?” What was val Whitney thinking? The land route would take three times as long!

  “At last sighting, they were marching towards the Forest of Doane. They either mean to make for Kandori, or...or,” a vindictive gleam sparked in Madden’s gaze. “Or they have a Nodefinder among them and make for the Seam. In either case, they shall not escape the black tide of destiny I shall summon in your name to wipe this army from the face of the realm.”

  Madden looked back to Stefan and collected his gaze via the window’s reflection. “But let us be candid, Lord Duke.” His voice took on a dreadful intimacy that made Stefan’s skin ripple with disgust. “You would be lost without me. Verily, verily...you would be nothing without me.”

  Stefan clenched his jaw.

  Madden’s spindly fingers found Morwyk’s arms. He stood behind the duke, gazing grimly over his shoulder at his reflection. “Should we walk separately into our mutual past, what scene would we survey?” Those skeletal fingers suddenly gripped hard. “You, Lord Duke, wallowing in insanity, your mind as lost as the Prince of M’Nador’s.” He brought his lips close to the duke’s ear to whisper, “Think on what I have given you.”

  Stefan didn’t for a moment believe the man was helping him out of altruism. Whatever Madden’s vendetta against the val Lorians, he wanted vengeance as badly as Stefan did. That put them on equal ground, no matter how many strands of elae the wielder professed to command.

  Stefan’s gaze pierced through the shadows veiling the wielder’s eyes. “You have until the new moon. When I reach Calgaryn, our accord will either be completed, or I bend the knee to Gydryn’s widow.” He studied Madden’s cadaverous scowl. “Call my bluff if you dare. My aims may be achieved other ways, but yours I daresay cannot.”

  A sepulchral smile twitched on Madden’s lips. He dropped his hands to his sides. “You drive a hard bargain, Lord Duke.” With that, he spun and made a scuffling departure.

  When the door had closed again behind him, Darren shuddered. “Gah, that man is repulsive. Why do you treat with him, father?”

  Stefan ignored his son.

  He didn’t trust Dore Madden’s assurances any more than he trusted Fate to be generous. He was going to have to take steps...and they were going to be costly.

  As if hearing the thought as its own sort of summons, the doors opened to admit the spider-tattooed Pearl, followed by a seven-foot giant wearing pantaloons and a scimitar, and behind him, half a dozen bodyguards of similar size but more adequately clothed.

  Then came the Karakurt herself, wearing a silk robe sashed tightly at the waist, her face obscured by multiple veils, and her head crowned with an ornate headdress fashioned in the shape of two long-necked birds.

  Costly or no, Stefan knew the Karakurt to be the kind of woman he would gladly take from any angle.

  “We hope you’ve found our hospitality to your liking so far, Lord Duke,” said the eunuch, Pearl. His smile was surely as oily as his limp cock. “Hopefully the wielder provided you with the information you needed to be able to complete your accord with us.”

  Stefan moved away from the windows. “That’s between myself and your mistress.” He pinned a smoldering gaze on the woman in question.

  Who smiled knowingly beneath her veil. “Leave us,” she commanded in a throaty purr.

  Stefan never had been able to place her accent, though her coloring suggested she hailed from a desert locale.

  Her minions turned and filed back out of the room. Pearl gave Stefan a slight bow and a large smile, then followed the others.

  Still gazing darkly at the Karakurt, Stefan murmured, “Darren, go find something useful to do.”

  Darren passed his gaze between his father and the woman and cleared his throat. “Of course. Useful. Righto.” He rose and strode from the room on long legs, past the Avataren who’d taken up a position outside the doors.

  Watching Darren departing, Stefan reflected that his youngest son was much like a wind-up toy. Most of the time he laid listlessly about, a forgotten plaything, but if wound and set upon a course, he would continue doggedly in that direction until either he reached his objective or his gears stripped themselves in the attempt.

  Once the doors were closed, the Karakurt removed her headdress and unwound the veil from her head and shoulders. Long black hair uncoiled down her spine. Stefan well recalled how he’d wrapped the rope of her hair around his arm the last time he’d been taking her.

  She walked to the cabinet and selected two glasses and one of the better absinthes. She poured the spirit, placed filigree spoons across two glasses, dotted each with cubes of sugar, and poured water across them. The faintly green spirit turned milky. She said while engaging upon this ritual, “I trust you got what you wanted from Madden. It was no small feat, getting him here to speak with you.”

  Stefan watched her noncommittally.

  She turned from the cabinet carrying the drinks. Her hips moved gracefully as she crossed the room to stop in the shadow of his form, close enough that he could smell
her perfume...and something else that scented his nostrils with the chalky brittleness of ash.

  She sipped from one glass, then offered the same glass to Stefan, along with a smile. “It has been some time since we’ve seen each other.”

  Stefan took the glass and watched her drink from the second one.

  She smiled again as she lowered it from her lips. “Many deaths to mark the passing moons.”

  “If one counts the days by deaths.”

  “How else should one count them?” Smoke-grey eyes gazed at him, hinting of amusement.

  He recalled her eyes had been colorless when last he’d taken her to his bed. Then again, it wasn’t her eyes he’d been focused on at the time.

  She sipped her drink. “What of this army he promised you?”

  “Delayed.”

  The hint of an I-told-you-so smile touched her lips. “So, you’ve decided to proceed with our new arrangement.”

  Stefan eyed her darkly. “You failed me before.”

  “You tasked us to slay a na’turna prince, but Ean val Lorian proved to be a wielder of merit. We cannot be blamed for sending a fox to snare the hare when the hare is actually a tiger.”

  “If the prince lives, he could become a problem to my aims. Our first accord was never completed.”

  “Madden will finish it. His vendetta against the prince runs deeper than yours.”

  Stefan looked her over. “Be it so...why should I treat with you again?”

  She smiled meaningfully. “You tell me, Lord Duke. You sought me out here in this manor, seat of your own dead liegeman. My boudoir skills are well admired, but I don’t imagine you crossed three mountains, dragging wife and army, just to take me to your bed.”

  Stefan would be taking her all right, but it would be right there on the Earl of Pent’s desk, not in a bedchamber guarded by spying maids.

  As he studied her, he couldn’t help being reminded of their previous encounter. He recalled how she’d been insightful to his mind in ways that had disturbed him even while her ruthlessness had aroused him.