The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  She looked impressively elegant in her deep violet cloak and traveling clothes in the same subdued hue. Being a princess of Kandori, she wore her pantaloons tucked into mid-calf boots, a long tabard over a jacket and tunic in heavily embroidered silk, and a sash—the only spot of bright color—in sumptuous turquoise. She had a jeweled dagger stuck through her sash and a recurve bow and quiver of arrows at her saddle. The weapons were adorned in gold and looked more decorative than useful, though he wouldn’t have dared say so aloud.

  Nor would he have insulted her by imagining she couldn’t use them—probably better than he could.

  The path widened, and Ehsan paused her horse to wait for him to move his mount alongside hers. Every time Sebastian looked at Ehsan, her beauty struck him mute. The tattoo of the Khoda Panaheh on her forehead just enhanced the perfection of her brow.

  One corner of Ehsan’s lips curled upwards as if to draw his attention to the amusement glinting in her blue eyes. “The waterwheel of your thoughts keeps splashing me.”

  Sebastian smiled and bowed his head to her point. “Yours is such a glorious presence, Princess, I can hardly be expected to think about anything else.”

  Ehsan’s eyes danced. “I do believe the way you compliment me is one of your better qualities.”

  “It’s certainly the safest one,” Bahman noted drolly from behind them.

  Sebastian glanced at him over his shoulder.

  Bahman flicked his reins meaningfully towards Ehsan. “If I’ve learned one thing in dealing with my feminine cousins, Sebastian, it’s the enormous utility of flattery.”

  “Admiration effaces all energy,” Ehsan said agreeably.

  “Is that—that’s not a proverb, is it?” Sebastian tried to recall if he’d heard the phrase before.

  “It’s the Second Law of Shadow,” Ehsan replied with a suitably mysterious smile.

  Sebastian thought she was jesting, but Bahman’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull. “Who’s teaching you the Laws of Shadow?”

  Ehsan turned forward again with her chin held high. “Perhaps I read it in a book.”

  Bahman trotted his horse forward to better meet her eye to eye. “And perhaps Mirza Parviz eats falafel in his cave, Ehsan, but that’s not the question I asked.”

  She smiled coyly at him. “A princess must have her secrets, Bahman. Surely Taahira has taught you this.”

  “What my wife has taught me is between me and my wife.”

  “By that logic, the answer you seek lies between myself and my husband-to-be.”

  Bahman turned a pointed stare at Sebastian.

  Who raised both hands, wearing a don’t-drag-me-into-this look. To Ehsan, he said, “I like the husband part though. At last accounting, you hadn’t decided if I was worthy.”

  Bahman snorted an as-if.

  Ehsan eyed Bahman amusedly, then turned an adoring smile to Sebastian. “I’ll admit your better qualities are encouraging a certain benevolence towards the idea.”

  Bahman shifted agitatedly in his saddle. “Ehsan, seriously, who is tutoring you in the arcana of Shadow? You know how deep my interest runs in it.”

  “Verily, it’s practically an obsession,” she agreed. “Taahira would reprimand me for encouraging you.”

  “Taahira would thank you because it gets me out of her hair. Please, Ehsan. I must know.”

  Ehsan gave him a voluminous smile. “Perhaps it is the same person who is tutoring the captain in our proverbs.” She turned her gaze upon Rhys in the lead with meaning dancing in her eyes.

  Rhys grunted noncommittally.

  “Mayhap Sebastian should take you over his knee,” Bahman grumbled.

  Ehsan turned him a suggestive smirk. “Where Prince Sebastian takes me is between me and Prince Sebastian.”

  Sebastian grinned.

  Bahman placed a hand over his heart and gave a bow of honor to Sebastian. Then he settled an adamantine eye on Ehsan and muttered, “I shall have to find another way to get the truth out of her.”

  “I’ve heard flattery works wonders,” Sebastian noted.

  “The river is its own proof, Bahman,” Ehsan replied sagely.

  “And within the crow lies the raven, Ehsan,” Bahman rejoined, giving her a pointed stare.

  She laughed and shot him a dancing smile over her shoulder. Bantering incomprehensible proverbs was one of Ehsan’s favorite avocations. “Joyful are the stars, for they cannot see the night.”

  Bahman’s gaze turned cryptic. “Maybe so, but the tree cannot see its own shadow either.”

  Ehsan laughed. “The unwary goat bequeaths its hair to the fleas.”

  Riding in the lead, Rhys chuckled at this.

  Sebastian frowned at the captain’s back.

  Apparently stumped for a suitable retort, Bahman muttered something about Kandori princesses being fond of proving themselves right with cryptic proverbs no one else could possibly make sense of.

  They rode on beneath the whirling wind.

  Afternoon had claimed the day by the time they reached an icy creek tumbling from the snowbound peaks. The air was brisk—and by that, Sebastian meant cold­—though the sun was shining brightly on its arc into the west.

  Rhys dismounted creek-side to let his horse drink, and Ehsan followed, slipping lithely off her dappled Hallovian. She seemed untroubled by many days of hard riding and as many nights sleeping on the hard earth. Albeit...Sebastian had been her pillow for most of those nights as they’d laid warmly entangled beneath their combined blankets...her long legs entwined with his, her silken form...

  Sebastian jerked his thoughts back to the present, only to find Ehsan smirking at him. He’d often wondered if his Sormitáge-trained wife-to-be had secretly studied elae’s fourth strand, for she seemed to know his mind as keenly as Dareios.

  Sebastian dismounted and swept his dark hair from his eyes. Then he draped forearms over his saddle and settled an inquiring smile on Ehsan. “Remind me...how many strands of elae have you trained in, Princess?”

  Her smirk widened. “A woman doesn’t need to be a truthreader to read that look in a man’s eyes, Prince of Dannym.”

  Rhys chuckled.

  Sebastian eyed the captain circumspectly. Sometimes he wasn’t sure whose side he was on.

  “Do you have a clear sense of direction on the eidola, Sebastian?” Bahman was still mounted on his horse and gazing westward. “I’m only asking because I sense there’s a node nearby. We could probably use it to get us closer and make up some time.”

  Sebastian mentally touched his first strand tracing pattern, feeling it quiver and resonate like the plucked string of a lute. The resulting wavelength drew the arrow of his attention towards a specific but still far distant point.

  “West and south is all I can say—more of the former than the latter, I think, but I can’t get a better lock on his coordinates yet.”

  “I can work with that.” Bahman clicked his tongue and cantered his horse off into the woods. He returned a quarter of the glass later, and they followed him back to the node he’d found, and then across it.

  Sebastian rode off the node onto a high overlook that offered a view to the west and south, where an immense, forested valley filled a basin between two mountain ranges.

  A hundred-plus miles as the crow flew west, the Eidenglass rose to form a forbidding and impassable barrier, twice as high as the arm of the Dhahari they were currently traversing.

  They made camp beneath an overhang and watched the sunset douse the sky in flame. The same burning colors painted the autumn forest a mile below them, interspersed with the green spires of fir trees which towered over the maples, oaks and alders.

  They partook of a meal more warming than satisfying, then Sebastian and Ehsan moved into the small tent Sebastian had raised for them, which gave some meager protection from the perpetual wind, and more importantly, some privacy.

  Sebastian was kneeling, spreading out their mats and blankets, when he noticed a flash of silver as Ehsan was sorting th
rough her pack.

  The prince sat back on his heels and swept his dark hair from his eyes, suddenly wary. “Why do you have goracrosta?” In his experience, it was the stuff of living nightmare.

  Ehsan glanced to him. “For the eidola, of course.”

  Sebastian blinked at her. “You mean...do you mean to take one alive?”

  She pushed her bedroll closer to his own, then seated herself cross-legged upon it. The wielder’s light hanging from the peak of their tent illuminated her face with a soft glow. “Dareios is concerned that our weapons may not work as effectively if the fundamental first strand pattern has changed. The news that Darshan didn’t make these eidola made him uneasy about it.”

  Sebastian only then recalled the way Dareios had frowned when he’d told him that these eidola weren’t bound to Darshan. “So he sent you...?”

  “It’s possible I may be able to determine what kind of being the creature is bound to through a study of its extant life pattern. And as a last resort, if the weapons don’t work as expected, I may be able to assist you and Bahman in developing new first strand patterns to adjust the matrix.” She studied him with a curious smile. “I thought my brother discussed this with you. Why did you think I came along?”

  Sebastian frowned. “I thought...” Chagrin and embarrassment doused him. He fell onto his back with a forceful exhale. “Ach, it doesn’t matter what I thought.”

  Ehsan studied him for a moment. Then she quietly reclined beside him and rested her head in one hand. Her fingers found his hair with gentle strokes. “What’s troubling you, Prince of Dannym?”

  Sebastian stared at the wielder’s lamp dangling above them. “I know you said I have to decide what course I want to set for my future, but Ehsan...” he closed his eyes, feeling his chest and throat constrict. “What kind of future can I possibly have?”

  “You are the firstborn of a king.”

  He gave a derisive laugh. “What people would want me for their sovereign? Oh, I’ll grant on the surface I can look the part, but if they knew my past? If they knew I’d been a wielder’s...” Sebastian clenched his jaw tightly, shutting down the words as well as the memories they evoked. “They’d stone me out of the kingdom, Ehsan.”

  She pushed up to sitting and gazed seriously upon him. “Few men have more of a mindset to lead than you.”

  Sebastian winced. “I can’t even command my own dreams.”

  “No man can, Sebastian.”

  A host of emotions played across his face. A part of him wished she could understand. A part of him hoped she never would.

  Sebastian closed his eyes. “How can I think about becoming king when I can’t even imagine facing my own father with the truth?”

  Ehsan smoothed his hair back from his forehead. “Regardless of your future role, you are his son. Nothing Dore Madden did could ever change that. If our son had undergone your trials, would you feel differently about him?”

  Sebastian’s eyes flew open. “Epiphany help him—no.”

  She arched brows meaningfully.

  Sebastian let his head fall back again. Of course she was right...and yet, his father had taught him that a king held his kingdom above all else. If a king sacrificed his kingdom for benefit of an individual, the kingdom wouldn’t long remain strong.

  Hearing Ean talk about what had happened in the years after Sebastian’s capture and imprisonment, of all the sacrifices his parents had made...he knew his father truly lived by those words. No man who cared as much for his kingdom as his father did would ever leave it in the care of someone with Sebastian’s history, even his own son.

  Still, he wanted to believe her.

  He owed so much to Ehsan. The fact that his leg no longer ached, that he’d nearly forgotten how badly he used to limp, that the vicious scar marring his cheek had faded to a thin white line, all but invisible... She’d healed so much more than just his shattered body. But was it enough?

  He just didn’t know.

  “You’ve made my scars cosmetically invisible,” Sebastian confessed softly, “but they’re still very much there, Ehsan. Every time I try to envision my future—every time I try to think what I want for myself...I just hit this wall of my own disbelief. I can’t get past it. I want to,” he added, looking back to her, “sincerely I do. I want to believe you’re right, but...I don’t know if I’m capable of conceiving the bright future you see for me.”

  He tried to force down the grief but was unable to keep from his expression just how broken he knew he was. “Ehsan...can a man with my history really expect Fate to be kind?”

  Ehsan’s gaze narrowed as she considered his words.

  Then she swung a leg over his body and settled herself firmly atop his hips. “Is this why you haven’t asked for my hand?”

  Sebastian blinked. “I...”

  Ehsan shook her head at him. She gathered the folds of Sebastian’s jacket and tugged them closed, pinning him with hands and thighs, her uncompromising gaze securing him as surely as her hips. “We say in Kandori that by the time a boy becomes a man, he is steel honed by honor. The swirls of his honor establish his choices for the rest of his days.”

  She swept a strand of ebony hair off one shoulder without removing her gaze from his. “If he is a man of little honor, his choices will follow a certain craven path. If he is a man true to his honor, his choices will follow a more distinguished one. Destiny is simply the end a man is heading towards as a result of his collective choices; but after a certain point, the footsteps of his choices have carved a groove towards his destiny. It is a rare man who escapes that groove once formed.”

  Sebastian folded his hands over hers. “You don’t think...with everything...” he pressed his lips together, refusing even to think of those memories, “you don’t think my groove is dug?”

  Her gaze softened with such admiration that Sebastian caught his breath.

  “You choose every day to be who you decide you are,” Ehsan told him quietly. “I see it when you wake with your muscles in knots and your skin damp from heated dreams. You rise from our bed with your hands in fists and stalk to the balcony carrying the remnants of remembered evils. But there...every morning, I watch you release that evil. I watch you purge your soul like a keeper flushing errant birds from his tower.”

  “Ehsan...” Sebastian managed.

  She laid her fingers across his lips. “You choose to live each day in spite of your past, knowing what he did, what you did, yet refusing to let those memories shackle you. Every morning I watch you choose a different path from the one Dore Madden tried to force you onto.”

  Sebastian’s eyes burned as he stared at her.

  Ehsan leaned and kissed him. Hovering over him then with her hands braced to either side of his shoulders, she said simply, “These are not the actions of a man enslaved. These are the actions of a man who will not be a slave to anyone. That is the man you are, Sebastian val Lorian, and that is the man I love.”

  For a choked moment, Sebastian just stared at her. Then he sat up, caught her into his arms and fastened his mouth on hers.

  They engaged in a different form of conversation after that.

  Over the course of the next two days, with Bahman staying alert for nodes to facilitate their travels and Sebastian keeping a weather eye on the eidola’s position, they crossed a hundred miles and made up enough ground between themselves and the creature that Sebastian could soon perceive it with the same unerring sense of direction that led him home through familiar woods.

  The sun was falling as they were riding southbound through a high meadow, with the sky-scraping Eidenglass range towering on their right. The mountains jutted fiercely and prominently out of the emerald hills to form soaring walls of barren, ice-bound rock and glittering snow. Sebastian had never seen mountains so formidable.

  They came to a small river flowing straight through the middle of the meadow and followed it downstream until it split around a granite outcropping hundreds of paces tall.

  The
fat left arm of the river continued its languorous path through the meadowlands, while the slender right arm tumbled down into a gorge.

  Bahman clicked his tongue and drove his horse through the shallows upstream of the granite fin. Sebastian watched him canter out of the river and down towards the lip of the gorge. He reined in the animal there, the uneasy horse pawing and snorting while Bahman studied both the cavernous depression and the forbidding mountains bordering it.

  Then he turned and fixed his gaze on all three of them while his horse continued trying to back away from the edge. “We’re very close to the Seam,” he called to them.

  Ehsan exchanged a look with Sebastian and Rhys. “Do you think that’s where the eidola are headed?”

  “It would mean they have a Nodefinder with them,” Sebastian said, puzzling over the idea.

  “Sebastian, what does your trace tell you?” Bahman called. “Do we follow the river or the gorge?”

  Sebastian mentally plucked his string of awareness. It vibrated strongly to the southwest. “That way.” He nodded towards the gorge.

  Bahman’s gaze turned steely. “Somehow that’s what I thought you’d say.”

  He waited for them to join him on the other side of the shallow fording, then they turned their horses south once more, following the rim of the gorge.

  The fissure quickly broadened and deepened until they were riding a hundred feet above its sandy floor. The gorge walls were covered in moss, lending a mysterious and fey cast to its depths.

  The longer they followed the gorge, the more clearly Sebastian perceived the eidola.

  The sun fell behind the mountains, and a bracing chill claimed their side of the ridge, but Sebastian wanted to press on. He felt the eidola too nearly to stop now.

  The stars were coming out when he finally called a momentary halt, sensing...something. A shift in perception that he couldn’t place but which had the hair on his arms suddenly standing rigid in alarm.

  Sebastian reined in his horse near an indent where he had a straight view down to the bottom of the gorge.

  Ehsan pulled her horse alongside his. “What do you sense?”