The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  Dore eyed both Leyd and Viernan irritably as he replaced the pieces in their spots.

  “We all know your justifications are beyond reproach, Leyd,” Dore said with surprising equanimity before looking back to Viernan, “and really, Viernan, all of this is quite moot. Princes are useful as bargaining chips and little else. Everyone knows it. Your First Lord knows it—”

  “He’s not my first lord,” Leyd rumbled with ninety-nine layers of meaning.

  “—even the val Lorians know it. A prince who thinks he’s worth more than a piece on the political King’s board is supremely overestimating his value to the realm. Your First Lord never should’ve made a Player out of a prince. That’s the simplicity of it.”

  Hearing Dore talk so cavalierly about Björn van Gelderan made Viernan’s insides pucker.

  “And very soon, the prince will know—”

  But Dore never finished the sentence, for all at once his wards sounded a banshee wail.

  Viernan’s clock had struck twelve at last.

  Leyd paused his glass an inch from his lips. “Is that...?” His green eyes lifted slowly towards the ceiling. Then he vanished. His glass shattered on the floor.

  “Shadow take the infernal creature.” Dore waved Viernan to follow him. “It would appear the drachwyr has come for you earlier than I desired, Viernan,” he said as he scuffed out of the room, “but no matter, no matter. The Lord Abanachtran will be here soon to receive her. Let us bait the trap.”

  ***

  Mithaiya made no attempt to evade or destroy the wards surrounding the fortress of Ivarnen. A bear did not bother to swat at a bee.

  As she banked in a circle around the fortress, Ivarnen posed an island of lights amid the deep darkness of the sleeping estuary. Directly above her, the stars of Cephrael’s Hand looked interestedly on.

  With eyes capable of dissecting compound elements, Mithaiya studied the currents washing in and out of the fortress. Their tides carried the impressions of everything they’d touched, bespeaking of eidola and men and gnarled patterns, the progeny of a twisted mind.

  But mostly she studied the currents for the stain of the man she sought: Viernan hal’Jaitar. Homing in on his location, Mithaiya banked again to approach the fortress from the south.

  Below her, eidola jittered in the main yard like clamoring cicadas, clambering over each other in protest and alarm. They were an affront to the lifeforce. But she wasn’t there for eidola that night.

  Mithaiya lifted a wing and angled across the fortress proper, over steep roofs and shadowed courtyards. The currents showed her that so much more lay beneath ground than above it.

  Finding the location she sought, Mithaiya melted out of the form.

  She plummeted out of the sky, through fortress roof and many floors to land in a sonic boom that exploded a crater of stone and earth.

  She rose out of a crouch and drew her sword, her gaze already fixed on her quarry, who thought to hide behind layered shields of elae.

  He could neither hide from her immortal eyes nor her vengeance.

  ***

  Viernan hal’Jaitar watched with nervous trepidation as the drachwyr Mithaiya rose out of her crouch, drawing her blade. Up close she was lithe and beautiful. If not for the power rippling off her like heat, Viernan wouldn’t have believed her capable of harming them.

  She’d barely taken two steps beyond the crater of her arrival when Dore’s patterns pounced on her.

  To trap the Sundragon, Dore had rigged some of the most vicious patterns Viernan had ever seen. Hooked barbs catapulted towards the immortal, corrosive of the first strand, engendered to erode Mithaiya’s life pattern—and especially designed to melt the elemental fifth. Viernan had watched those patterns turn an eidola into unrecognizable slag.

  The patterns found the Sundragon and ignited. Smoke and flame exploded through the room, hitting up against the combined shield that Viernan and Dore both held in place. The blast sent them skidding backwards. The currents boiled.

  When the smoke cleared, Mithaiya was coming towards them with the fifth running in rivulets off her shield.

  Viernan took a reflexive step backwards.

  He and Dore were not only shielded but magically concealed, hidden behind thick, protective patterns and multiple layers of elae. There was no way Mithaiya was getting through all of that.

  But to see her walking unhindered through that tumult of explosive power...he finally understood the magnitude of his mistake.

  Leyd’s patronizing tone when he’d spoken of Viernan taking on the drachwyr...it made sense to him now. For this creature walking out of smoke and flame with the fifth literally melting off her shields was a Sundragon. No mortal on this plane could hope to even comprehend her power, much less pose a match for it.

  Dore shouted, and eidola poured out of the shadows by the dozens. Viernan knew an uncommon dread, but Dore appeared far from frantic.

  “She’s fallen for it, Viernan!” he whispered gleefully. The manic grin he wore promised that all was going according to plan.

  The eidola swarmed towards Mithaiya, each one infected with the Labyrinth, a teeming mental plague. The creature in the lead launched itself through the air. Mithaiya caught it one-handed by the throat and held it aloft.

  “This is it! This is it!” Dore preened. “She’ll try to burn out its mental core—”

  And the very air exploded.

  The blast drove Dore and Viernan forcefully back again. Even with their shields protecting them they were nearly pitched off their feet under the roaring onslaught of energy.

  Around them, eidola popped out of existence.

  Mithaiya appeared out of the burning, cinder-choked air with her shields radiating as red as the setting sun.

  “The Labyrinth?” Her voice echoed in multiple dimensions and roused all the hairs on Viernan’s arms. She was practically laughing at them as she continued her predatory advance. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

  Dore cursed a stream of invective.

  Apparently, all was no longer going according to plan.

  Throw it! Dore shouted on a wave of the fourth. Throw it now!

  A huge net of goracrosta sizzled as it fell through smoke and billowing ash. It snapped closed around Mithaiya.

  Dore launched towards her, firing off pattern after pattern. Fireballs and sonic booms rocked the room. Stone shattered. Shards of volcanic glass pelted Viernan’s shields. He staggered hither and yon on exploding currents of air.

  The goracrosta net conformed to the surface of the sphere made by Mithaiya’s shields in a sizzling spectacle of white smoke and blue flame. Dore continued his onslaught, snarling, spitting curses, his eyes wild.

  The sphere of Mithaiya’s shield wavered, dented, bubbled and buckled like cheese on a hot iron skillet. She dropped to one knee.

  Dore cackled and continued his attack.

  Viernan watched with bated breath.

  Mithaiya bent her head...

  Viernan wondered apprehensively if it might’ve finally been too much for her. He wasn’t sure if this idea relieved or disappointed him.

  Dore moved closer, shrieking gleefully.

  Mithaiya surged out of her crouch and flung her sword.

  No—flung off her sword a beam forged of pure power.

  The spear of light sliced through Dore’s layered concealment, split matrices that could’ve held off a collapsing mountain, seared through shields designed to withstand an exploding volcano—

  And impaled Dore Madden.

  He flew in a blur to slam into the back wall and hung there, pinned to the stone by a flaming spear of the fifth, his legs flailing, blood gushing, and squealing like a pig.

  Viernan fled.

  A short time later, keen to the dwindling sands of his own life’s clock, Viernan stood once more over his dying prince with his heart thudding in his ears.

  Would the sacrifice of one prince save the life of another? Did the gods really operate on such crude precepts,
the vengeful morality of an eye for an eye? The Fhorgs of Myacene still made blood sacrifices to their gods. Viernan wondered if they even noticed.

  He stepped back from the bed as the blood spreading from Radov’s slit wrists began dripping on the floor. The Ruling Prince’s breath was slowing, his heartbeat fading. No more would nightmares haunt his days.

  Viernan put the bloodied dagger back in its sheath at his hip without cleaning it. This blood he would carry to the end of his days.

  All around him the currents rippled, testimony to Mithaiya’s chase. The drachwyr was pushing a tsunami of the fifth before her as she hunted him down. Viernan already felt the airy elements compressing his chest...either that, or it was the unfamiliar fist-hold of grief clenching around his heart.

  Reverently, almost profoundly, Viernan leaned and kissed his prince’s forehead. Then he slowly straightened, crossed the room and stood before the open terrace doors with his back to the world and his face to his fate.

  Mithaiya rounded the corner with blood in her gaze.

  Viernan thrust a rectangular plate of glass towards her—far better protection than any shield could prove in that moment. He sent a flow of the fourth into the simulacra to waken the illusion pinned there, and a three-dimensional pattern shimmered into being between himself and the drachwyr.

  Mithaiya drew up short.

  “This is what you want, isn’t it?” The fifth was beating off her in waves, pummeling Viernan. “Your First Lord needs this matrix to unwork the deed that banished your siblings, and for that, you’ll need to possess what I’m holding.”

  Mithaiya looked ready to take it from him and his arm along with it.

  Viernan hastened to add, “Surely you see the line of the fourth I have upon the simulacra. Make a move to harm me, and the glass breaks. I assure you, I can destroy this pattern faster than you can destroy me. All I must do is flex a muscle of thought. Even should you slay me here, can you be sure that death will not bring about this very contraction?”

  Mithaiya stared hotly at him.

  For the flash of an instant, with the drachwyr making a volcano of the currents and his prince bleeding out on the bed, Viernan thought of Trell val Lorian undergoing his metamorphosis in the caverns beneath his feet...thought of perhaps using this knowledge as a bargaining tool—Dore hadn’t been completely wrong about the usefulness of princes.

  But he couldn’t bring himself to serve Trell by telling the drachwyr of the prince’s presence in Ivarnen, not even if it meant serving himself. Who would be harmed? Who would be helped? Ever these principles guided his decisions. Besides which, benevolence was a flavor he’d lost all taste for. If Trell val Lorian was going to have some future beyond that night, let Fate be the one to decide it.

  Mithaiya looked him over while the fifth fissioned off her shields. Her gaze alone seemed hot enough to melt stone. Finally, she replied in a voice of velvet steel, “I’m listening, Viernan hal’Jaitar. Make your case.”

  “Your word,” he said at once, “that you will not harm me.”

  “You seek my honor when you display none?”

  “We are both pawns of another’s scheming, Lady Dragon. Surely this truth is clear.” Viernan glanced regretfully to his prince, now lying on a bed soaked with his own blood, then turned his gaze back to her. The waves of her presence were making it hard to breathe. Or perhaps it was the loss of everything he’d held dear. “I didn’t create this matrix—that truth must be obvious to you. For sparing my life, I’ll provide the name of the one who did.”

  Mithaiya arched a raven brow. “And the matrix—unharmed, unaltered.”

  Viernan nodded. “As you say. Do we have an accord?”

  Without pause, Mithaiya crossed the room and carefully plucked the simulacra out of his hand. The heat radiating out of her made him instantly sweat. “The name?” she asked as she pocketed the glass.

  Vengeance burned in Viernan’s gaze. “The zanthyr Leyd.”

  Her expression made no change, but the currents went even wilder. Mithaiya pushed past him and launched herself in a dive off the balcony railing.

  A blaze of brilliance blinded Viernan.

  When the spots had cleared from his vision, Mithaiya had vanished out of view, but the stars of Cephrael’s Hand were burning brightly in the heavens in her place.

  ***

  Amithaiya’geshwen soared away from the fortress of Ivarnen with the fury of a thousand suns exploding in her core.

  Leyd.

  Of all the unconscionable, spiteful acts he’d perpetrated over the millennia, this one topped them all. She would see him commensurately punished if it took her last dying breath to do it.

  Mithaiya flew out over the darkened estuary with its salt-saturated river reflecting starlight and banked hard before the even darker outline of the Iverness mountains, which formed the kingdom’s northern border. Flying back towards the fortress, she ruminated.

  Her role had never been one of jury, judge and executioner—that was always Rhakar’s providence—and she felt the weight of responsibility to take the simulacra to the Mage as fast as possible.

  Yet...to think of Viernan hal’Jaitar striding down the road of his misdeeds without stumbling on even a pebble of consequence?

  Honor be damned, Mithaiya couldn’t abide it!

  Elae’s currents washing out of Ivarnen were as dark as the night-shrouded river. Verily, the entire island imposed a stain on the mortal tapestry.

  Surely the Mage wouldn’t fault her for wiping such a maelstrom of horrors off the map. And attacking the island...well, she’d made no promises to Viernan hal’Jaitar about the fortress remaining safe. Her honor would stand untarnished.

  As Mithaiya flew high, now a mere gilded speck passing among the stars, she studied the island’s compound elements. The plateau sat on a granite foundation honeycombed with caverns, the rock itself an amalgam primarily of quartz, along with other minor minerals.

  Mithaiya sent the fifth seeking every particle that had solidified in crystalline cohesion until she was certain she’d penetrated to the foot of the mountain, until the entire webwork of quartz was glowing in her mind.

  Then she changed it all, with a single thought, into sand...

  And gave the island a gentle push.

  Once-fused compounds found new chemistry. Compromised foundations shifted with kinesis.

  And deep in its bedrock, the island shuddered.

  Then it all started sliding apart.

  Perceiving the mountain dissolving behind her as she speared through icy clouds, Mithaiya smiled. If any of Ivarnen’s occupants managed to escape her judgment, then Cephrael wasn’t done with them.

  If not, good riddance.

  Fifty-six

  “If we follow the tugging of our hearts, we may find that the

  hand holding that string belongs to our gods.”

  –Emir Zafir bin Safwan al Abdul-Basir, Unifier of the Seventeen Tribes,

  addressing his Converted

  Tannour Valeri was communing when he saw the dragon come spearing down out of the heavens. Her body displaced massive quantities of air, while her wings spawned mile-long whirlwinds with every stroke. Tannour recognized her instantly as the same dragon he’d met in Abu’dhan.

  Mithaiya.

  She flew through him—perhaps she took no note of his disbanded particles, or perhaps she recognized him; he couldn’t know—and banked in a circle around the fortress. Black creatures of the same vile make as the warlord chattered and chased below her in the yard.

  The dragon swooped near again, then turned south over the castle. Tannour watched her halt herself with a powerful stroke of her wings. Then a dazzle of shifting elements split Air into refracted particles, and molten gold energy plummeted down out of the sky.

  A sonic boom rattled the fortress windows and sent the eidola scurrying for cover.

  Tannour watched as Mithaiya smashed through a roof, a floor, down through a second level, and finally landed in a clap of thund
er and an exploding crater of stone and earth.

  Tannour swept down the tunnel in her wake.

  Was it possible she’d come for Trell?

  The obsidian chamber where he emerged reminded him greatly of the node chamber at the warlord’s stronghold. Like that other place, this one also seethed with patterns waiting to trap, paralyze, destroy.

  Air whispered that the traps were especially attuned to her but warned they would also be attracted to him. Tannour could tell that much just from the electric static charging the space. Choosing prudence over valor, he hovered in that invisible refraction of almost-cohesion where the patterns couldn’t perceive him.

  Mithaiya had taken human form during her plummet. Now she rose out of a crouch and drew her sword from the scabbard on her back. She stepped beyond the crater of her arrival—

  And all hells broke loose.

  Tannour used the distraction to whisper on into the fortress.

  But as he moved soundlessly through the upper passages of Ivarnen, he grew ever more concerned.

  Air found no trace of Trell.

  He should’ve been able to feel him, sense him, perceive at least a hint of his whereabouts. The tattoo he’d inked into Trell’s skin was magnetized to the prince’s life pattern. No matter what horrors might’ve been worked upon Trell’s flesh to erase the mark, the pattern itself would always return, so long as Trell was alive. That Tannour couldn’t sense him...

  He tried not to think about the potential causes of this.

  Air told him only a single living soul resided in the castle’s upper levels. Tannour solidified beside a bed where a man lay sleeping. It wasn’t Trell.

  Already he perceived his binding tattoos rousing to the powers he was using, the hydra lifting its poisonous heads after long years of slumber. The mercuric bands cuffing his wrists tingled. The lines of script on his neck itched. He had no idea how long he would have before his mind was simply no longer his own. Long enough to save Trell, he prayed. Long enough to damn himself, assuredly.

  Tannour shifted dimensional planes and dropped down through the floor.