Inside was cool, the night’s fair breeze trapped beneath the stained gauze covering. The wielders spread themselves along the forward edge and fixed their gazes on the high walls of Raku atop the escarpment, which appeared a darker shadow two miles distant. Between crenellated walls and Nassar’s camp, Radov’s forces were already amassing, lining up beside the men of Morwyk. In all, they were ten-thousand strong. By dawn, the desert would be an undulating sea of determination and flashing steel, and not nearly enough piety among them for Nassar’s taste.
“What now?” asked one of the wielders.
Torqin clasped hands behind his back. Nassar noted that his right hand sported a thin gold band on every finger. “Now?” He fixed his gaze to the east and the coming dawn. “Now we wait.”
***
The attack came with the dawn, well timed so the Akkadian archers had the Nadori sun to contend with as much as the Nadori soldiers. First the Nadoriin attacked the bulwarks with their spikes and sharpened stakes, but they were so numerous, and their commanders so insistent, that the bulwarks were soon overrun, the dead making a carpet for the living to storm over unimpeded.
Next they met the naptha trenches, whose fire held them back for a time. But the commanders drove the soldiers over these as well, in much the same fashion.
“He cares nothing for them.” Jayachándranáptra, Rival of the Sun, hugged her arms and gazed out across the battle with a furrow between her brows.
Beyond the outer walls of the oasis, swaths of oily smoke billowed up to stain the dawn skies while the blood of brave men stained the sands. Archers lined the walls, three rows deep, already busy making pin-cushions of the Nadoriin. Behind them, the rest of the Emir’s soldiers were amassed and waiting.
“It’s war, Jaya.” Náiir joined her at the crenellated wall. Like her, he wore his fighting blacks and carried a dragon-hilted greatsword on his back. “Soldiers fight, they die.”
She eyed him tetchily. “Thank you for clarifying that truth. I haven’t been observing it for the last million cycles of the sun.” Abruptly she blew out an aggravated breath and lifted her gaze to the skies. “Where is Ramu? I would we stopped this insanity.”
“We cannot intervene until they breach the walls. You know that.”
“I don’t know that.” She shot him a frustrated look. “Balaji isn’t always right.”
“He’s more often right than wrong.”
“That is utterly irrelevant.” She returned her gaze to the battle. “Balaji said the tapestry is thick here. Thick enough to hold our weight.”
“But many branches of consequence extend forth from this battle, Jaya. If we break one with a misplaced step…” Náiir wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “I worry for Mithaiya, too. Like you, I would rather be searching for our sister than watching men tear each other limb from limb. But we cannot rush the hours. We have to choose every step carefully.”
Jaya watched the smoke billowing a quarter mile away. She could smell blood burning in it. Her eyes tightened. “Ramu may say differently.”
“Ramu will not overrule Balaji in matters of Balance.”
Jaya flung a look at him. “Why can’t you be agreeable and side with me for once? You always take Balaji’s side.”
“That is because I am a better cook than you, Jayachándranáptra.”
Jaya turned to see Balaji and Rhakar coming along the wall.
“Well said, brother,” Náiir turned with a smile. “A man’s mind and allegiances reside in his stomach.”
Jaya harrumphed. “Your mind resides a good deal lower than your stomach.”
“We cannot understand what we are unwilling to ourselves become, Jaya.”
“If being a male involves scattering your seed like a pollinating pine, I would rather live without the knowledge.”
“And so begins our descent into unknowing, our fall away from godliness.”
Jaya flicked him a look. “Stop trying to distract me by talking about philosophy.”
Náiir winked at her. “Is it working?”
A horn sounded, harsh beneath the rosy dawn.
“The Nadoriin have reached the walls.” Balaji frowned slightly.
“Finally. We can end this now.” Jaya looked expectantly to her brother.
Balaji continued frowning.
Along the lower wall, the Emir’s soldiers were fighting off Nadoriin scrambling up scaling ladders, while on the battlefield, catapults appeared, trundling through the smoke.
Jaya felt a desperate urgency. “Why are we all still standing here? Balaji, you said—”
“I know what I said, Jaya.” Balaji watched the battleground with a focused intensity. Yet his gaze was misleading, for though he stared out at the battle, he was surely studying the mortal tapestry instead.
“What is it?” she asked. “What do you see?”
“A knot in the fabric,” Rhakar muttered.
“Of course it’s knotted.” Jaya flung a hand to the lower wall. “Thousands of mortal threads are ending!”
Rhakar crossed his muscled arms and looked to Balaji. “We should wait.”
Balaji shifted him a look of agreement.
Jaya threw up both hands and spun away from them. That’s when she saw her favorite brother approaching. “Finally!” She turned them a triumphant stare. “Ramu comes to bring some sense to all of you.” She started off to meet him.
“That’s not very complimentary, Jaya.” Náiir called after her. “I’m far more handsome than Ramu. I should be your favorite brother.”
“You might be if you were more agreeable,” she tossed back.
“More amenable, you mean?”
Jaya took Ramu’s arm. “At last you’ve come to bring reason to this insanity.”
“Which insanity?” Ramu eyed her speculatively. “The battle, or our brothers?”
Two such brothers gave Ramu looks of greeting, but Balaji continued staring out into the smoking valley. “Do you see it, Ramu?”
“Yes,” Ramu said gravely, joining his side.
“Yes,” Jaya grumbled, “thousands of men are killing each other when we could stop it.”
Balaji shifted a troubled look to her. “If we act now, Jaya, more will die.”
“More than are dying already?”
Náiir shifted a look between Balaji and Ramu. “What do the currents tell you?”
“The currents are in a storm,” Rhakar remarked over crossed arms.
“Yes, to my eyes also.”
Balaji’s frown deepened. “There is an inexplicable darkness in the tapestry.”
Ramu exhaled a decisive breath. “I fear we must walk it to find the light at the end.”
“Enough dithering.” Rhakar threw himself over the wall.
***
The wielder Torqin clenched his jaw and held tight to the pattern poised in his mind. Holding elae’s third strand in a static pattern was like trying to restrain a raging bull. He felt kicked all to hell, and he hadn’t even worked the damned thing yet.
“What’s bloody taking them so long?” another of his wielders hissed under his breath.
Their simple instructions to wait for the Sundragons to take to the skies were not so easily accomplished when it meant holding patterns in their consciousness for over an hour. But they would have only seconds to act, and it took more than seconds to conceive of these patterns properly. It took more than courage to conceive of them at all. They were attempting an attack upon immortal fifth-strand creatures. Torqin had never felt so close to his own mortality.
Another pointed. “Look there! Is that—”
Torqin raised a hand to the others. “Wait. They must all be together.”
They watched from their high, hidden vantage as first one and then four more dragons emerged through the oily smoke rising from the naptha pits.
“There’s only five,” one of the others said uncertaintly.
Where is the sixth? “Wait!” Torqin cautioned.
“We cannot wait!” Th
e wielder beside him turned with fear in his eyes. “They’ll incinerate the prince’s army.” Under which circumstances they all knew hal’Jaitar would incinerate them.
“He said all six had to be present,” Torqin growled, but he felt the same urgency to release his pattern, the same need to be done with this business.
“It has to be now,” said the wielder on the end. “I cannot hold the fifth any longer.”
A chorus of hissed consent followed this statement.
“Five is better than none,” one of the others pointed out.
“Very well.” Torqin prayed he wasn’t signing his own death warrant. “We proceed.”
They all joined hands and linked minds through the bond they’d created for the purpose of this working. The wielder holding the fifth-strand pattern placed it in the shared space for the rest to view. They each then layered their patterns upon it—rapidly, almost frantically now that the end was so close in sight—until the matrix floated in their shared minds.
They studied it then, each from his own perspective, to be certain all the patterns were correctly interlaced. They knew its aspect well, having practiced this rendering almost continually for nearly a fortnight.
“It is done,” said the wielder of the fifth. “Aye,” agreed the next, and on down the line, until Torqin added the final aye and they counted in their minds together, Three, two, one—
***
“All is in readiness, Your Majesty.”
Gydryn val Lorian turned his head to nod to the steward. “Tell Prince Farid I’ll be right there.”
The man pressed palms, bowed and departed.
Gydryn looked back to the valley. From his vantage at the Emir’s palace, he gazed out across a flashing sea of steel, row upon row in orderly columns, five hundred to a block, block upon block arrayed across the sand.
Ten-thousand strong. That was the assessment from men with sharper eyes than him. The Nadoriin were nearly a mile distant, but the wind still carried the tang of oiled armor and aggression—never mind the stench of burning flesh—to him from the south, where columns of smoke darkened the sky.
Was this the scene he was destined to face from the walls of Calgaryn Palace? All their futures writ so clearly, those who stood to oppose the unstoppable trinity of Radov, Bethamin and Morwyk? Across that flashing sea, easily as many banners waved with Morwyk’s colors as with Radov’s, flaunting their alliance now that all the cards were face-up on the table. And once they’d reclaimed Raku for M’Nador, would this army turn its strength against Dannym?
Gydryn exhaled a slow breath. Had he been able to sit his horse sooner, he wouldn’t have been there to see this assemblage, and would’ve slept better for it. Watching such a force marshalling against a man of decency and honor made him feel too keenly for his own neck.
It had taken him far to long to recover his strength, too long to write letters to those who needed to hear from him, too long to face another journey across the desert with the memory of the last one a pall upon his courage. And now that all was finally in readiness for his departure to Nahavand, too long to pull himself away, to commit to the course of action they’d all agreed upon.
In his heart, he wanted to help Zafir—in the very least, he owed him his sword—but if he brought his forces from Nahavand to bolster Raku’s soldiery, who would stand to defend Calgaryn against Morwyk? The Duke of Towermount could not long hold the city alone.
These were bitter choices he was facing. His kingdom or Zafir’s. His responsibility to his people versus his responsibility to the man who’d saved his life, without whose selfless action he would have no chance to help his people at all. Where did honor reside? He felt he would be compromising it no matter what choice he made.
Farid was waiting for him in the palace atrium—pacing, actually, with all the patience of a caged leopard. The Nodefinder prince had the look of a leopard, too; all hard muscle beneath the soft covering of his desert robes, a close-shorn beard hugging his jaw, his shoulder-length dark hair pinned close beneath his turban. He spun in a whirl of robes at Gydryn’s approach. “Your Majesty, I regret we can no longer delay. My father fears for your life.”
“You didn’t invite Radov’s army to crowd your walls, Prince Farid. How far to the node?”
“It lies beyond the city. We must hurry. Your honor guard is assembling by the west gate.”
The king followed down the passage after Farid, still feeling a convalescent’s uncertainty in his limbs. While determination held him upright and grit drove him forward with his will set on reaching Nahavand and Calgaryn beyond, a part of him remained there in Raku, in the Emir’s war room, forever paused in that moment when he’d looked across the map table and seen his son’s courage, the admiration those seasoned commanders held for him, and the look of respect in the Sundragon Rhakar’s yellow eyes.
Gydryn would never forget that moment. He felt bound to it, bound in it, for it was the moment hope had been reborn—not for himself so much as for his kingdom. It was the moment when he realized that Trell could lead should he himself fall; the moment when he knew that no matter what happened to him, Dannym’s future was assured. And oh, how tempting in this realization to stay and offer his sword, for what it was worth, trembling limbs and all! As far as the world was concerned, Gydryn val Lorian was dead, his life already forfeit, his choices made and that path walked.
Before his reunion with Trell, Gydryn saw no future for himself but the road that returned to Calgaryn. Now he saw many potential futures. With two strong sons alive to carry forward his line—
Oh, these were dangerous thoughts. Cowardly thoughts? Brave thoughts? He couldn’t decide. Responsibility yoked him in both directions.
They reached the horses and mounted with silence lengthening between them, but in the distant city, horns were bellowing. The morning wind carried echoes of shouting, fighting; deceptively innocent whispers, drained of emotion.
Farid cast a tight gaze to the east. “We should be able to make it. The Mage’s dragons patrol the skies.” Yet he sounded uncertain. He swung into the saddle in a swirl of robes and looked to Gydryn as he took up his reins. He was a fierce prince, Zafir’s middle son, hardly older than Trell yet with a severe intensity to his gaze, as of earnestness honed by responsibility to its most extreme edge. “You’re ready, Your Majesty?”
“As I’ll ever be, Prince Farid.”
Farid set his heels to his horse and rode hard for the west gate.
***
Ramu—
Jaya!
Balaji!
Anchor yourselves!
Ramu felt the pattern hit and cling to him like bitumen. A force speared through his shields into his mind, spreading instant confusion. Other patterns blasted thought from his reach, blasted his body upwards into the sky. No, elsewhere.
A familiar disorentation swirled.
No…elsewhen.
Anchor yourselves! Ramu hastily threw an anchor into time. He continued whirling backwards…forwards? He couldn’t say into what when he was headed, couldn’t stop time’s spool unwinding, only perceive its unraveling threads amid the swirling, kaleidoscopic light.
Balaji…?
Jaya…?
Náiir…?
Rhakar!
None of his siblings answered his summons. They’d all been scattered, tumbled through time.
Ramu’s anchor held and eventually he slowed, but the kaleidoscope remained. Wherever the working had cast him lay between the bindings of universes, beyond the collective reality, into a where/when unbound by agreement, without the shared solidity birthed of mankind’s unified concept of time and space.
This was an ingenious working, elaborate and well structured. An inventive intellect had devised it, one that well understood fifth strand immortals and their native shields. Such patterns lay far beyond the ken of Viernan hal’Jaitar.
Balaji…?
Jaya…?
Náiir…?
Rhakar…?
Ramu cast
harpoon thoughts through the aether of space/time in search of his siblings’ minds. While those hooks sailed forth, he grabbed hold of the taut line of his time anchor and began dragging himself back along it.
But he knew already that he hadn’t cast his anchor soon enough. The moment of their departure was too far behind them now. Without an anchor in that moment, they would never regain it.
Perhaps one of his siblings had realized sooner what had occurred and anchored themselves closer to the moment. He didn’t hold out much hope for this.
Eventually their minds would find each other. Eventually had many interpretations.
Ramu kept hauling on his line.
***
Nassar abin’Ahram stood beneath an awning along with several other commanders, the Consul Viernan hal’Jaitar and Prince Radov, watching in wonder, watching in horror, as the Mage’s Sundragons flew through the billowing smoke of battle and abruptly vanished, ripped from the aether in five dark swirls, as if sucked into a vortice.
“Ha! I knew it would work!” Radov threw down his glass in a triumphant smashing of crystal. He immediately called for another one. “I told you it would work, Viernan.”
“My prince is ever wise,” drawled Viernan hal’Jaitar. He looked to the commander beside him. “I counted five dragons. You?”
“There may have been five of them before they vanished, Consul.”
Viernan looked to Nassar. “How many dragons did your eyes count, Nassar abin’Ahram?”
“Five, my lord.”
Viernan turned his gaze back to the battle. “Five.” His dark eyes tightened. “Five, indeed.”
“Viernan, what are you waiting for?” Radov threw back the entire glass of absinthe and then choked through a wheezing exhale, “Call out the other things.” He extended his glass to his steward to be refilled while still partially bent over.
Something that might’ve passed for emotion made a brief appearance within the consul’s frown. Then he snapped his fingers to one of his waiting Shamshir’im, and the man bolted off like all the demons of thirteen hells were chasing him.
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