The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  He pressed his lips in a tight line, trying to translate what he was feeling into some logical context. Whatever sense was summoning his unease, it did so with an unrelenting insistence. “I can’t tell if the eidola are on this ridge with us or somewhere down below.”

  Ehsan leaned to look over the edge, down into deeper darkness. “Could you move us down there?”

  “Yes, easily, but...” he turned his gaze southward again. Moonlight limned the gorge rim for several miles. “I have no idea whether it’s one of them or a thousand out there. I’d rather we have the high ground.”

  “Then lead on, my prince,” Rhys murmured.

  Sebastian tried once more to place the wary feeling, but finding no explanation for it, he clicked his tongue and prodded his horse on.

  With every step his horse took southward, Sebastian’s heart beat faster. Myriad tiny filaments of perception were shouting with wrongness, yet his eyes, his ears...these grosser organs saw only the moonlit landscape, heard only the sounds of the creek echoing up from the gorge, and the plod of their horses’ steps across the earth.

  It was the kind of feeling he’d experienced as a child alone in the dark, a sort of building anxiety surrounding a certainty that something was very wrong. As a child, such anxiety blossomed from superficial fears and too many stories of the Demon Lord, but as a man with Sebastian’s past, it was born of experienced intuition.

  Suddenly, Sebastian knew.

  “It’s happening!” Sebastian summoned wielder’s fire and heeled his horse into a canter. Beneath the illumination that bloomed in the heavens, the canter swiftly expanded to a gallop.

  Rhys and the others followed close, the four of them storming along the rim of the gorge. The captain raised his voice to be heard over the thunder of their horses’ hooves. “What’s happening, my prince?”

  Sebastian spared a taut glance for him. “I don’t know!”

  But he felt it. He felt it the way Ean had described it. Like the game calling him—summoning him—onto the field. He’d always thought this explanation was just another of Ean’s excuses for his own willful actions, but now, feeling it himself...

  It was more than an urgency to act, more than a quivering of conscience that filled his chest with anticipation to the point of pain. It was certainty. Sebastian could no more turn aside from that call to action than he could’ve stood by and let a child drown in front of him.

  Within minutes, his haste proved justified, for they heard the eldritch keening of chittering eidola, mingled with the ominous rhythm of battle and shouting men, all of it echoing through the bullhorn of the gorge.

  First to be illuminated beneath his floating sun of the fourth was an army packed into the ravine. For the flicker of an instant, Sebastian wondered whose army it could be, for they wore no obvious livery, but just as quickly he dismissed the point as inconsequential. If Dore Madden had sent his eidola to destroy these men, Sebastian counted them as allies.

  As they sped on, the distant foliage lining the gorge rim gained new focus, and Sebastian saw not stunted trees but eidola crowding the edge, dozens thick. They were howling an inhuman clatter and having a grand time jumping off into the gorge, no doubt doing their best to land on as many brave men as possible. The echoing sounds of battle had amplified into cacophony.

  Sebastian hissed a curse and drew his sword.

  Ehsan was faster. Two of her arrows flew past him to claim the closest creatures, even as Sebastian was throwing himself off his horse.

  Then he started carving through the eidola. Every slash of his blade reverberated to unhinge the creatures nearest to the one he’d struck. His black-bladed sword didn’t have the same strength of resonance as the arrows Rhys, Ehsan and Bahman were now firing, which disrupted a dozen of the surrounding creatures for each one impaled, but his sword had the advantage of being deadly in his hand.

  Rhys backtracked along the gorge to see to the safety of the army, while Sebastian carved his way through the eidola to reach the rim. When he saw the nightmare unraveling a hundred paces below his hovering, incandescent sun, Sebastian knew fury so hot that his vision turned white at the edges.

  He took three running steps and threw himself into the gorge.

  ***

  Gydryn swung his Merdanti blade and cleaved a fissure through the stone chest of the creature coming at him. With revulsion in his throat, he watched the blackened flesh part like any man’s, yet even Merdanti wouldn’t stop the creatures, save by running them through. Loathing had spread through his consciousness until he’d gone numb with the horror of it—and still they kept coming.

  All around, his men were dying.

  Ramsay fought to his left, Loran to his right. They also had Merdanti blades. Most of his men did not, though they were doing their best to recover the blades from the fallen. Sometimes they had to fight with an eidola for possession of it, and those contests required at least five soldiers to pry the blade free from the demon’s grip.

  The starlight posed a heartless observer that night. The forms of the eidola were dark streaks against the moss-eaten walls as they plummeted from the heights, landed in craterous explosions of sand and quickly climbed out again, covered in grit, black mouths gaping in those horrid, ridged-gum grins.

  The battlefield on the gorge floor had devolved into chaos. Men fought in terrified clumps, often collected behind the one soldier wielding a Merdanti weapon, while the eidola taunted them viciously, teasing out their horror before what seemed an inevitable end.

  Too many of the demons to count ranged across the sandy bottom, seeking anyone to attack. Strategy found no quarter there—only courage.

  A demon mob surrounded Gydryn and his two officers, who were the boulders across the cave mouth, the last bastion between the creatures and the rest of Gydryn’s army. The latter were out of sight half a mile deeper within the gorge, hidden by high walls and night’s blanket, waiting to cross the node.

  If there was one saving grace, it was that the eidola clustering atop the rim were content to chitter and clatter down at their brethren like spectators cheering on a gladiator. They hadn’t yet noticed the rest of Gydryn’s unprotected army. At least, he prayed it so.

  And Gydryn did pray. With every swing of his blade. With every wheezing exhalation. With every inch of his being and beat of his heart and agonized pulse of blood through his veins.

  But the night remained dark, and their prospects darker. No god-light speared down from the heavens. No lightning bolts exploded the enemy. No goddess breath shivering with death rose from the earth to claim the unworthy. Perhaps the gods didn’t answer him because Gydryn didn’t expect them to.

  He fought on nonetheless, spearing eidola, his limbs trembling, his breath belabored, his fortitude drained to the dregs of his will, but somehow he kept going, as did the two brave men beside him. Because the battle wasn’t over. Because in such a situation, you fought or you died, and that simplicity was all the mind was capable of concerning itself with.

  He watched his brave soldiers being beaten or crushed, slain, butchered or dragged—screaming—by their heels into the craters of sand, never to emerge. But he also watched them defeat eidola and shout in victory.

  Regret and guilt ravaged him, but his men were fighting shoulder to shoulder with courage, and this ephemeral truth was yet flame enough to fuel his determination.

  Still...he harbored no illusions that they would win.

  The overwhelming tide was just that: overwhelming. For all his breath had mostly left him, they’d hardly breeched the surface of the enemy’s numbers. His men were being massacred by less than two hundred monsters. How many still collected around the gorge rim, noisy bystanders jittering with malice? How many more remained beyond the wall of broken stone?

  Ten more demons jumped off the rim like children from a dock into a summer lake. They landed in a boiling explosion of sand that tumbled some of Gydryn’s soldiers and buried others.

  Bounding up again, they came for Gy
dryn and his officers in a mad rush. They clambered wildly over the other demons Gydryn was already fending off. They clawed for the king and his officers, tried to grab their blades, and lost fingers or hands for their effort. And still they kept at it, beating at them with stubby arms.

  Gydryn’s instinct beneath that onslaught was to retreat, but there was nowhere to go. The narrow passage behind them ran for twenty paces before opening again, but if they didn’t make their stand here, if they let the creatures past them...all would be lost.

  Gydryn fought with equal parts horror and desperation, knowing in the way of all soldiers that he was tiring faster than the enemy, that his mortal body would eventually falter, his limbs simply unable to lift his sword for another blow, and that would be the end of it.

  Suddenly an eidola made a ladder of its brothers and launched into the air to slam into Ramsay. The captain tumbled beneath the creature, and a stream of demons poured through the opening made by his absence.

  Gareth and Gydryn tried to close ranks, but the eidola were a deluge flooding past, trampling Ramsay, all but ignoring Gydryn’s blade and the deep fissures it left in their flesh. Finally he and Gareth reached each other and stemmed the flood. They stabbed for all they were worth to hold off the rest.

  But how many? Gydryn thought with a desperate pain in his heart. How many had gotten past?

  Fear for his men closed its fist around his lungs. He felt wetness on his hands and realized he was bleeding. He hadn’t even noticed that he’d been wounded. But now that he was giving some attention to his body, he found his left arm and shoulder aflame and weeping blood, while his fingers were quickly going numb.

  Behind them, Ramsay found his feet again and staggered after the eidola who’d slipped through. Loran meanwhile fought grimly beside Gydryn. Blood streaked his face and dripped from his beard. Sweat and sand matted his hair.

  They exchanged a look. Neither of them acknowledged what they saw in the other’s eyes. Then Loran’s expression went slack. “Gydryn...”

  The king swung his head to look up at the gorge rim, following Loren’ frozen stare. In that moment, he watched an eidola fall from the edge—not leaping but toppling—head-first to slam into the sand, dead as a stone. Some that had been near it started screeching and grabbed their heads with their hands.

  Suddenly a sun bloomed over the canyon, illuminating the battle in blazing light.

  Gydryn watched an arrow fly down from the rim and strike an eidola on the gorge floor, whereupon it and a dozen others around it fell into screeching convulsions. Three more arrows rapidly found their marks, to similar result. The air soon churned with frenetic screams.

  Then he appeared, flying off the gorge rim.

  The man plunged a hundred paces beneath a rippling cloak and landed already swinging. His blade took an eidola across its chest, and the soundless power of that connection reverberated so forcefully that Gydryn felt it drumming through his chest. Every subsequent strike of the wielder’s blade across an eidola’s enchanted flesh cast the demon in question and half a dozen others surrounding it into flailing, screeching convulsions.

  The mob of eidola who had been attacking Gydryn and Loran screamed an unholy clatter and tore off to engage the hooded man.

  Black chaos now frothed at the gorge rim, while arrow after arrow continued flying down into the gorge. Every one found its mark.

  And all around whatever eidola had been struck, others quivered, withered, stumbled back and collapsed atop one another. The sound of their convulsing limbs beating against one another made a macabre rhythm.

  Gydryn and Loran stood frozen, mouths agape. When Mithaiaya had fallen out of the sky to save Gydryn’s life, he hadn’t known such an impossible sense of wonder.

  The froth at the rim began to still. Dead or dying eidola sprawled atop each other, forming a low wall blurred by occasionally twitching limbs. Gydryn watched two hooded archers leap onto the highest pile of the dead and continue firing down into the gorge.

  Another ran atop the low wall of tumbled creatures to reach the mouth of the gorge, where he jumped down fifty feet, landed lithely atop the mass of broken stone and continued firing down, out of Gydryn’s view, ostensibly at the creatures amassed in the valley outside the wall.

  On the gorge floor, Gydryn’s surviving soldiers had formed up ranks. Those with Merdanti blades were running behind the hooded wielder, delivering fatal blows to the other eidola who were somehow being affected through proximity.

  Gydryn couldn’t fathom how any of it was happening.

  Ramsay chugged up behind him and heaved an exhale as he fell against the rock wall. Gydryn spared a taut glance for him. The captain’s rounded eyes spoke volumes, but he managed a breathless, incredulous, “Saved. An archer—”

  Yes, the king well understood the face of their salvation, if not the means of it.

  He looked back to the chaos to find it had become a rout.

  The sun glowing over the gorge illuminated their victory. As Gydryn’s men realized they’d vanquished their enemy, they looked to each other and began cheering.

  The swordsman walked to the gorge wall and gestured to those above him, and Gydryn watched the archers step off the rim and float soundlessly down, buoyed by the wielder’s power.

  Arriving below, two of the archers went with the hooded swordsman, ostensibly to ensure the dead stayed dead, while the other archer espied Gydryn and his officers and started their way, pushing back his hood.

  Her hood.

  Gydryn’s mouth fell open.

  His men moved aside to let her pass. She stepped carefully over the fallen eidola with delicate steps and smiled warmly as she neared.

  Gydryn somehow managed to find his voice. “Princess Ehsan?”

  “Your Majesty.” Ehsan pressed palms and bowed her head politely to him.

  Gydryn mirrored her greeting. Straightening again, he met her eyes, feeling wonder tingling anew. “How long has it been?”

  “Almost thirty years, I believe.”

  “You—” he had to corral his thoughts around his amazement, “you haven’t changed at all since the days of our youth.”

  Ehsan lifted a hand to indicate her forehead.

  Gydryn noticed then the pattern tattooed between her brows. “Oh, of course.” He recalled the meaning of the sigil. Still, he gazed wonderingly at her. “If you’ll forgive my incredulity, Ehsan—how in Tiern’aval did you find us?”

  Ehsan shifted her bow on her shoulder. “We’ve been tracking an eidola out of Tambarré. It led us here.”

  Gydryn stared at her. “Then...” he exchanged a stunned look with his officers, “it was just by chance that you happened upon us?”

  Something ineffable came into Ehsan’s gaze, softening her expression. The hint of a smile touched her lips. “I think, perhaps...not by chance, Gydryn.” She turned a look over her shoulder.

  The hooded swordsman was approaching, trailing the other archers and two dozen of Gydryn’s men, who were brandishing their Merdanti blades like spoils of war and egging on the cheering.

  Gydryn wondered for a split second if it might’ve been Ehsan’s brother Dareios coming towards him, but it seemed impossible that the cloaked hero who’d leapt from the heights could be her philosopher brother.

  The crowd of soldiers parted to let the swordsman through. Many cheered louder as he passed. The swordsman reached the clearing where stood Ehsan and the king—

  And drew up short.

  His hooded head swung to Ehsan.

  Gydryn also looked to the princess, made curious by the exchange.

  She gazed in return at the swordsman and gave a minute shake of her head. Tears were welling in her blue eyes.

  The man remained frozen in place.

  Gydryn couldn’t see the man’s face beneath his hood, but in the charged indecision that followed, the king got the impression that the wielder was fighting an impulse to turn heel and leave without ever receiving Gydryn’s thanks.

  “Ple
ase.” The king beckoned him forward.

  After a pause in which Gydryn could almost feel the wielder’s reluctance, so heavily was it radiating, the man took two slow steps forward and then one more.

  Then he pushed back his hood.

  In the moment when Gydryn recognized his face, his eyes and head said the sight couldn’t be true, but his heart prayed to every god in the known that it was.

  Beside him, Loran caught his breath. Ramsay choked out an oath.

  Gydryn staggered forward. “Sebastian?” It had been nearly ten years since he’d spoken his firstborn’s name.

  Impossibility collided with truth. Then Gydryn charged across the separation and grabbed his son’s broad shoulders. He searched his face, now chiseled with the angles of manhood.

  Sebastian’s gaze...Gydryn could no longer read it. Too many tumbled years fogged the lens. Somehow he’d survived. Somehow he’d become a wielder! But none of that mattered to the king.

  A decade of loss, heartache and ruin washed away on a deluge of joy. His boy—his firstborn—was alive and standing before him!

  Gydryn collapsed to his knees.

  Sebastian’s face twisted. Then he dropped to his knees also and took Gydryn’s shoulders. “Father...” His voice was strained, taut with emotion, threaded with concern.

  But all Gydryn knew in that moment was a weightless, unbridled elation.

  “My son.” He took Sebastian’s head between his hands and kissed him on both cheeks. “You saved us.”

  His words ran deep with meaning.

  Tears brimmed in Sebastian’s eyes.

  Gydryn had forgotten the world existed until Loran shouted suddenly in a voice gruff with emotion, “It’s our own Prince Sebastian!”

  Sudden cheering reverberated through the gorge.

  A joyful grief clenched Gydryn’s chest. He only wanted to stare at his firstborn son, but instead he pulled him into his embrace. A choked sob escaped Sebastian. He clutched his father tightly in return.

  Their embrace, along with the soldiers’ cheering, lasted a very long time.