The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  “Sounds very much their style, wouldn’t you say?”

  Tannour angled a tight stare at him by way of agreement.

  They gazed at each other for a long while then, with Tannour cursing everything and everyone and his uncle sitting in the still silence of a man who’d long ago made his peace with Death.

  Then Joren seemed to make a decision. He set down his drink, rolled up his sleeves and held out his forearms to Tannour. His tattoos were dark. Not a single glint of silver.

  Tannour gave his uncle a charged look. “That’s why they can’t find you? You escaped them?”

  “No one knows but me, and now you.”

  “By the Two Paths, Joren—how?”

  Joren restored his sleeves while gazing speculatively at him. “We each have to carve our own path to redemption, nephew. The route I took is no longer open, but...” and he retrieved his glass while frowning with thought, “but there might be a similar path you could walk. It won’t be easy. It might be long.”

  “Whatever it is—”

  “It starts with your own sacrifice, I’m sorry to say.”

  Tannour frowned. “Of what?”

  “Your abilities, nephew, in trade for a kind of freedom.” He looked Tannour over thoroughly. “One that may lead you to the man who saved me.”

  Tannour considered all he was hearing while he drained his glass.

  Lowering it again with his throat flaming, he focused on his uncle. “You don’t know for a fact what they’ll do. I mean...I can still do a lot of things even if I can’t commune.”

  Joren held his gaze gravely. “You do what you think is right, nephew. That’s all the gods can ever ask of us.”

  Tannour considered life without walking ver’alir. Then he evaporated the glass in his hand with a thought and lifted a daggered gaze to his uncle. “Tell me about this path.”

  In the end, despite his hopes, it had gone much as Joren warned that it would.

  Tannour had been communing over the city, having left Joren alive and his contract unfulfilled, when a massive electrifying jolt magnetized his particles into form against his will. Tannour saw blinding light, then a darkening oblivion as his body tumbled like a stone out of the sky.

  He crashed through three awnings to land in a pile of crates. Consciousness returned slowly and with extreme prejudice. He could barely breathe through the pain.

  Somehow, he managed to drag himself home. He still couldn’t recall how he accomplished it with his arm broken in three places and a leg that wouldn’t function. He’d collapsed on the living room floor and remembered nothing until two weeks later, when he’d roused to find himself in bed, Loukas asleep in a chair beside him, his arm functional and his leg in a splint.

  The tonics sitting on the bedside table as much as his working arms told the story of hired Healers and a lengthy bout with fever. His memory was slower to recover, but by the time Loukas roused and opened his eyes, Tannour had pieced together what had happened.

  But he hadn’t yet known the far-reaching ramifications of his choice.

  That came a few days later, when he was finally out of bed, standing before the sink and attempting to do something he’d done every day of his life.

  That’s when he realized Air was no longer speaking to him.

  They hadn’t just severed his tether. They’d taken all of his gifts. They’d stripped away everything that made him special.

  Worse than knowing this truth was having to confess it to Loukas.

  But he had told him—everything he could. Because Loukas had demanded it of him, because he’d desperately wanted Loukas to know that he had a plan for them, that all wasn’t lost.

  Trying to speak some of those truths had made Tannour physically sick. He’d laid on the floor, shaking and sweating, feeling knives in his stomach. Once he even passed out. But he told Loukas as much as he could make himself say. Some truths simply wouldn’t form on his tongue.

  And he’d watched his only friend in the world retreat even further from his reach.

  “Fiera’s ashes,” Loukas’s green eyes had hardened with rebuke, “was I your conquest? The thing you had to achieve?” His furious words felt like stilettos stabbing Tannour’s chest.

  “Loukas, don’t think that way, please,” Tannour had begged him. “They take everything good in my life and twist it. That’s the path that’s chosen them. I can’t escape it, them—any of this. The fact that they made me betray you is only because they know how I feel about you. Because ties outside of the ones they stain into my skin are forbidden, and they’ll do anything to see us broken!”

  Loukas seethed. “You blame the Sorceresy as often as you blame your gods. Can you find no responsibility for your own actions? You used me, Tannour!”

  “No!” He’d staggered across the room on a still-mending leg and found his knees before Loukas. “They used you to get to me. Fethe, Loukas, I’m in love with you! That’s why they tried to ruin us. How can you be so brilliant and still not see that?”

  The hate in Loukas’s stare made Tannour feel sick. “You have a twisted way of showing it.” He turned away. “Get out. I can’t stand to look at you.”

  Tannour had found his feet somehow.

  Despite his words, Loukas turned back to look at him. Tannour let the heat of his friend’s blistering stare scald him, because he deserved it, because there was nothing else for him to do but follow the path he’d chosen for the both of them, and hope and pray that there could be some ending to it somewhere.

  “Will you come with me to do this thing, Loukas? Join the Converted? Find a way through?”

  Loukas’s gaze offered only condemnation. “Where else am I going to go?”

  %

  Tannour had been trying to find that way through for nearly a decade. All the while he’d hoped for something—but he’d never imagined the path would lead him to this! To his tether restored in Trell val Lorian, and to Trell’s Adept brother who could unwork patterns.

  Tannour felt air displace. He turned from the railing to see the Warlock—

  fethe, a Warlock!

  —coalescing in the other room beside Ean.

  When Ean had first introduced the Warlock to Tannour while still surrounded by the infinity of Shadow, Rafael had appeared as a demigod with a torso of crackled gold, flaming raven hair and eyes as black as his misting wings. But in Kandori he looked human, with gold-flecked aqua eyes and a come-hither smile. Tannour found it incredibly disturbing.

  As he coalesced beside Ean, Rafael was wearing an outfit so bejeweled that it rivaled the Kandori prince in whose palace they were sheltering. The Warlock bent and placed a hand on Trell’s shoulder, appeared to study him for a time with whatever power he commanded, then straightened and delivered Ean an admiring smile. “This is well done, Ean.”

  Ean sat back and exhaled a forceful breath. “Only just.” He gave a nod of thanks to Rafael, then turned a speculative look to Tannour. Then he rose and joined Tannour on the terrace.

  Ean offered Tannour his hand, and Tannour clasped wrists with the younger prince.

  “Thank you for saving my brother, for caring for him.” Val Lorian grey eyes so like Trell’s own assessed Tannour keenly. “For watching over him.”

  “Then it’s done? The A’dal is himself?”

  The ghost of a smile hinted on Ean’s lips. “If only you could’ve seen how hard he was fighting that working.” The smile manifested with pride, seemingly in spite of Ean’s best efforts. “He wasn’t giving up, even with Dore’s compulsions hounding him.” He arched brows to emphasize this point, then gave a mighty exhale. “Even so...a few more hours and he might’ve been beyond my saving.”

  Something released inside Tannour. He blew out a ragged breath and dragged both hands through his hair. “Fethe.” His eyes held Ean’s, who was still studying him. “Who would’ve thought this possible?”

  Ean smiled. “Have a little faith, Tannour. We’re none of us playing this game alone.” He glanced to Rafael
, who had taken the chair Ean had just vacated and was now sitting with a hand resting on Trell’s shoulder.

  Perhaps feeling Ean’s gaze, the Warlock murmured, “I would study him more, with your permission, Ean.”

  “As you will, Rafael.” The prince looked back to Tannour. “My brother won’t wake before the morning. If you’d like to find your own bed—”

  “I couldn’t sleep to save my life.”

  It was true, even though he needed sleep desperately—Tannour had lost count of the days since he last knew rest. But he wouldn’t be closing his eyes until the A’dal opened his.

  “Good.” Ean looked him over with a cryptic smile. “Because I have lots of questions.”

  The prince led Tannour through a maze of arched passageways, columned interior courts and walled open-air gardens whose fountains gushed starlight all the long hours of the night. Eventually they climbed a spiraling staircase and emerged beneath a rooftop pavilion whose dome glittered like diamonds. Two decanters of wine and a set of goblets stood waiting for them on a table.

  Tannour paused when he saw them. “Did you just conjure—”

  Ean shot a smile over his shoulder. “No. This is Dareios’s doing.” He started pouring them some wine.

  Tannour approached slowly. “How did he know we would come up here?”

  Ean extended a goblet to him. “Knowing Dareios, he has wine waiting for us just about everywhere.”

  The prince motioned Tannour into a deeply cushioned chair and himself took one across from him, but he perched on its edge, clearly energized in a way that only intensified Tannour’s exhaustion.

  Ean rested elbows on knees and his grey-eyed gaze on Tannour. “When I saw you in Ivarnen, I knew you were fifth strand, like me, but you’re more than that, aren’t you?”

  Tannour slowly lowered himself down onto the chair. “I wish I could tell you. All I know of the strands of elae is what I’ve learned from your brother. The Sorceresy tells us we’ll be at odds with Adepts from the Sormitáge and warns us against cooperative action with anyone trained there.”

  “Fascinating. How does the Sorceresy teach you to pattern without learning about the strands?”

  “We aren’t taught to pattern. We know patterns exist, but...” Tannour shrugged.

  Ean studied him closely. “You’re taught to do then, without understanding the mechanics surrounding the action. Am I reading you right?”

  Tannour nodded.

  Ean contemplated him as he sipped his wine. “What can you do? Will you show me?”

  Tannour considered him with a frown. “Ean...” he set down his wine apprehensively, “you should know that I may not long maintain my abilities after tonight. They’ve taken them away before.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “Yet it happened. For nearly a decade I couldn’t work my powers.”

  “And then?”

  Tannour exhaled a slow breath. “I met your brother and everything changed.”

  After considering his words, Ean held out his hand, palm up, and leaned to capture Tannour’s gaze. “Will you trust me?”

  Tannour thought it should’ve been harder to find that trust after a lifetime of deception. But perhaps trust came when necessity demanded it. Either way, Tannour placed his hand in Ean’s.

  The prince closed his fingers around Tannour’s and looked him over with his own power. Tannour felt it in the rippling air and saw it in Ean’s concentrated gaze. After a few minutes of this, the prince inhaled sharply. “You’re—” his eyes flew back to Tannour’s. “Tell me about your tattoos.”

  Tannour winced. “There isn’t much I can say.”

  “Yes, truthbindings,” Ean nodded. He was still apparently viewing him on multiple planes. “They’re all around you. And other bindings as well.”

  “Like Sebastian?” asked a voice from the darkness.

  Tannour and Ean both turned their heads to see Dareios approaching between two columns. The sun was just then making a fiery line behind the eastern mountains, and its nascent glow caught the Kandori prince impressively.

  “Not like Sebastian,” Ean told him, then added for Tannour’s benefit, “my oldest brother. A wielder held his mind hostage for five years.”

  Tannour remembered Trell speaking of Sebastian. “Where is he now?”

  “Away, and very sorry he missed Ean’s return, I’m sure,” Dareios said with a pointed look at Ean.

  Dareios explained to Tannour as he came and poured himself some wine, “Prince Sebastian only just left a few days ago. Of late, he and Ean somehow cannot manage to both be here at the same time.” He sipped his wine. “Ean, mayhap you should use this new skill of yours of popping about the realm to pay your brother a visit.”

  Ean’s gaze glinted with affection. “Consider me well chastised, Dareios.”

  “Mmm,” the lightbender murmured, sounding unconvinced. “My sister Ehsan would doubtless find this reprimand far from adequate, but at least I can tell her I made an attempt.” He sighed and looked to Tannour. “I would rather deal with half-mad wielders than any of my sisters, Tannour, and Ehsan proves especially difficult.”

  “The beautiful ones always do,” Ean said with a wink. He returned his gaze to Tannour but continued saying to Dareios, “Dore’s matrix over Sebastian’s mind was predominately fourth-strand, focused on controlling Sebastian’s thoughts. Tannour’s bindings are...mystifying. They involve every strand.”

  Tannour blinked. “How can you know all of this?”

  “My variant trait enables me to see patterns. It’s intrinsic to being able to unwork them.”

  Tannour looked harder at him. “I can see impressions of patterns through the language of Air, but you’re talking about—”

  “They’re as solid to me as you are, Tannour.”

  Dareios sipped his wine. “I’ve had limited interaction with Sorceresy-trained Adepts.” His colorless eyes looked Tannour over intriguingly. “What can you do?”

  Feeling unsettled and stupefied and really quite dreadfully tired, Tannour angled a look at his hand, which Ean still held, and the prince released it.

  Then he exhaled. Here goes nothing.

  He communed. He watched Ean and Dareios both draw back and exchange a portentous look. Then he congregated back in his chair.

  “By Cephrael’s Great Book...” Ean looked floored. “Do that again.”

  Ean made him commune at least a dozen more times—enough to make him horribly dizzy—and every time he dispersed into the aether he feared that would be the time they severed his tether. He was an emotional mess by the end.

  Dareios must’ve read something of Tannour’s state of mind, for he murmured finally, “For Epiphany’s sake, Ean, let the man rest.”

  Ean’s eyes were alight. He was brimming with energy as he looked to Dareios. “Can you see all the strands he’s working?”

  Dareios murmured, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Tannour, one last time, I promise,” Ean said, “and then I think I’ll have your abilities figured out.”

  “That would make one of us at least.” Tannour closed his eyes, summoned his resolve, scraped together the energy he needed to disperse into the aether, and communed.

  A forceful jerk tugged him instantly back into form.

  He gasped as he reappeared, startled—terrified—that it had happened at last, that they’d severed him.

  “No, it wasn’t them,” Dareios soothed, easily catching his thoughts.

  “That was Trell,” Ean said, smiling meaningfully. “Or rather, the line that connects you and my brother. I just gave it a little tug.”

  Tannour’s heart was racing. He swallowed back the dry-throated panic that had overtaken him. “It...felt like when they severed my tether.”

  “Tether. That’s what you call it?” Ean glanced to Dareios again. “It’s like the anchors Nodefinders place upon a node while traversing the pattern of the world.”

  “A grounding line,” Dareios sa
id by way of understanding. He noticed Tannour looking a bit out of sorts and placed a hand on his shoulder, strong and reassuring. “Here, have some more wine.” He poured him another glass. “Let Ean tell you what he’s learned.”

  Ean looked Tannour over eagerly. “I just have one last question, if you don’t mind.”

  Tannour motioned for him to ask it.

  “Did all of your tattoos accompany a new skill?”

  Tannour thought back through his years of training and the many, many sessions beneath that scalding needle. “Not all of them.”

  “Let me rephrase. Did you ever learn a new skill that wasn’t followed by a tattoo?”

  Thinking through this, Tannour realized that every new skill he’d mastered had culminated in a session with his artist. “You’re right,” he breathed, wondering now at the connection.

  Ean sat forward. He looked immensely pleased. “Can you show me one of the tattoos?”

  Tannour obligingly rolled up his sleeves and extended his arms to Ean. The prince took his hands and looked over the tattoos cuffing his wrists, and the inked gauntlets extending up his forearms. They all glowed silver in the dawn. “These are different, actually,” Ean said, indicating the cuffs. “They’re not connected to any skill.”

  “That’s right.” Tannour gave him a wondering look. “You can tell that from their design?”

  “No, it’s in how they connect to your life pattern. I’m guessing the tattoos are permanent—that is, you can’t even burn them off? They’ll only return?”

  Tannour nodded wordlessly, amazed by Ean’s understanding.

  The prince released Tannour’s hands and rested elbows on his knees. “The patterns you’re using are—thirteen hells, it’s a vast number of patterns working in concert. It would be difficult if not impossible for a wielder to do what you’re doing because of the differences in their training.”

  He turned a wide-eyed look to Dareios. “A score of patterns from the different strands, all wielded at once. I daresay even Björn couldn’t manage it easily.”

  Tannour puzzled at the name. He felt he should know it. “Who is Björn?”

  “Björn van Gelderan,” Dareios murmured. “Alorin’s Fifth Vestal.”