The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  Dagmar groaned and shook his head. “You must not have slept again.”

  “What gave me away?”

  Dagmar eyed him dubiously. “You only discuss existential philosophical conflicts at the dawn hour when you haven’t seen your bed in a very long while.”

  “Sleep is overrated,” Björn replied with a wink.

  Dagmar shook his head forlornly. “The less you sleep, the more intractable you become. Where’s Dämen? Why isn’t the Shade managing you better?”

  “Someone has to run things in Niyadbakir while I’m out here being intractable. Cities don’t evacuate themselves.”

  “At least not in an orderly fashion,” a smiling Isabel remarked. “The alarm drills are continuing daily.”

  Dagmar eyed the two of them. “You really think the people will leave when the day comes?”

  Björn shrugged. “We prepare for an eventuality where they may not have a choice.”

  Isabel drew her robes closer about herself and added, glancing to Dagmar, “Raine reports that the grid is holding elsewhere in the realm, but the tear in T’khendar’s fabric is widening. The cities need to be ready.”

  The sky had lightened into the exact blue-grey color of the First Lord’s coat and was illuminating rose-tinged clouds along with Isabel’s robes, so that as they walked toward the north side of the ridge, the two leaders seemed to Franco chosen of the dawn, incarnations of its essence.

  Franco couldn’t say if it was the dawn light or by some other power, but he could see Isabel’s tattoos glowing suddenly, silver-faint beneath the silk of her garments. If Franco hadn’t known the truth, he would’ve thought the patterns had been stitched with thread-of-silver into her desert silks.

  Dagmar observed Isabel’s tattoos at the same time Franco did. Then he looked to Björn, and something passed between them.

  The two Vestals were always conversing with bare glances and cryptic statements, one half-communicated thought spurring the next, but this look even Franco understood. And what he saw in Dagmar’s gaze made him go cold inside.

  “Stop thinking about me behind my back.” Isabel placed her hands on the obsidian wall and turned an uncompromising stare over her shoulder at the men.

  Dagmar crossed his arms. “Have you told Ean what’s happening?”

  She returned her attention to the north and its glistening sea of sand. “I don’t want to influence his path any more than I already have.”

  “So he has no idea—”

  “Ean has to make choices for himself, Dagmar.” Isabel tightened her hands on the railing.

  “Balance still weighs heavily on Ean’s path,” Björn said by way of supporting her decision. “Especially now.”

  Dagmar shifted a frown between Björn and Isabel. “But the Warlocks have returned.”

  “To Illume Belliel,” Isabel said without turning.

  Dagmar speared a look at Björn. “Not Alorin?”

  Björn let out his breath slowly, shrugged.

  The Second Vestal’s eyebrows shot up. “You don’t know?”

  A smile cracked Björn’s expression. “You underestimate him if you think he’ll make this easy.”

  Franco was only partly tracking with their conversation, but it really didn’t make sense to him why Dagmar was talking about the Warlocks returning to Alorin as if this was a good thing...even a necessary thing.

  “But you’ll know when he works the lifeforce.” Dagmar made this sound more a statement of fact than a question.

  “If he works the lifeforce,” Björn admitted, “but he’s far too savvy to make that mistake without a solid rationale beneath it.”

  Which confused Franco all the more, for Warlocks couldn’t work elae.

  Dagmar exhaled a measured breath. “He’s the game-changer.” He shifted his burly arms, looking pensive. “You think he knows that?”

  A smile teased one corner of Björn’s mouth. “I think he generally envisions himself as the lord of all existence most of the time.”

  Dagmar grunted. “And I thought your zanthyr was insufferable.”

  Isabel remarked, “Immortality and humility often find difficulty coexisting.” She motioned them to join her at the wall. “Come and see, my lords.”

  They reached her just as the sun speared its first golden rays above the horizon. Across the vast, empty desert, the light found something to reflect against—nay, many somethings, if told from the stripe of radiance suddenly glimmering at the northern limit of their vision.

  In a moment, Franco had it. Two hundred-plus Paladin Knights were making their exacting way across the dunes.

  “It took them bloody long enough,” Dagmar muttered.

  Franco had barely spared a thought for the knights since transporting them to the same desert node where he’d delivered Carian vran Lea and Raine D’Lacourte, what felt a lifetime ago.

  As General Ramuhárikhamáth liked to say, there was nothing quite like trudging across miles of empty desert to season a man’s inveterate intractability into a willingness to listen to reason.

  Isabel slipped her arm around her brother’s waist. He glanced curiously to her as he drew her close in return. “I confess...” she said with the flicker of a smile, “I wasn’t completely certain of this part of the plan.”

  He pressed a kiss to her head. “There’s no game if you’re certain of the outcome, sister-of-my-heart.”

  The Second Vestal sucked on a tooth. “What say you...three weeks off yet?”

  “Or longer,” Björn murmured. “The way they’ve been going in circles.”

  “All the better to season the stew of sanity.” Dagmar squinted towards the sparkling blur on the horizon. “Balaeric has been checking on them periodically, leaving food and water for them to find. I’m not sure what more he could do short of carving large arrows in the sand.”

  “I doubt they’d follow them anyway,” Björn said with a smile.

  Dagmar grunted to this truth. “In any case, I’d best get preparations started to receive them.” He sounded doubtful of the outcome of that confrontation.

  “Ye of little faith.” Isabel cast a smile in his wake.

  Dagmar spun with open arms and began walking backwards. “You, my Lady Prophet, I have the utmost faith in.” He placed a hand over his heart and jerked his blond head towards the north. “It’s them I doubt.”

  Whereupon he dragged his scarf up over his head and vanished through the portal.

  Isabel withdrew from the circle of her brother’s arm. She looked like she wanted to say more to him, but a glance at Franco made it clear she would save her thoughts for later. Epiphany knew the weight upon her shoulders—both of their shoulders—yet the only hint of the burden she carried was a tension behind her eyes.

  The same tension resided in the First Lord’s gaze as he watched his sister.

  Franco wondered who Björn saw when he looked at Isabel: the High Mage of the Citadel? Epiphany’s Prophet? The Lady of T’khendar? Or some other moniker that had attached itself through the centuries to the ever-mysterious Isabel van Gelderan?

  Björn took her hand and planted a kiss upon it. “I haven’t lost faith.”

  She chuckled. “Doubtless because you don’t want to lose your bet with Dagmar.”

  “There is that,” he admitted with a wink.

  She gave him a grateful smile. “I’ll leave you two to your planning. Illume Belliel and Alorin both are in need of attention from our Second Vestal,” and with this, she angled a voluminous look at Franco that stripped all pretense of avoiding the conversation from his thoughts.

  Franco watched her go, feeling suddenly as if all the weight she carried had been transported onto his shoulders instead.

  Björn looked him over quietly. “It’s high time we restored some order to the realms, wouldn’t you say, my friend?”

  Franco tried to steady the swarming feeling in his skull. “My lord, forgive me, but I think you overestimate my abilities.”

  “Do I?” Björn’s a
nswering smile only heightened Franco’s misgiving. The First Lord draped an arm around his shoulders and guided him towards the pavilion. “So... let’s you and I talk about Warlocks, shall we?”

  Three

  “Once one has surpassed the technical skill needed

  so that doing becomes second-nature,

  action transcends into art.”

  –The Adept wielder Arion Tavestra

  Trell of the Tides...you must end this war.

  Trell still heard the goddess Naiadithine’s water-voice speaking to his soul...still saw the men of Raku dying, their blood staining the mirror She’d made of the flooded waters of Khor Taran...still saw his father’s body sinking within the sacred spring, his unconscious face coming into view as the water dragged him down into its depths.

  A blustering wind tore down from the peaks and pushed Trell’s hair into his eyes. The trail they were following that morning wound among the high ridges of Abu’dhan, where two thousand feet above them, russet crags scraped a sky of churning clouds. The wind blew constantly, singing a tuneless melody above the rhythm of horses’ plodding hooves, the jingle of harnesses and the strain and creak of leather. A thousand men strung a winding line through the pass behind Trell. Not a one spoke.

  Trell reflected it was a unique experience receiving a command from a god.

  He absently rubbed his shoulder, still sore from Tannour’s invisible ropes at the waterfall of Khor Taran, and pondered the miracle the Vestian had worked in saving him and Lazar hal’Hamaadi from a dark, watery death.

  Tannour was going to be a major asset. Likewise the others of his growing company. Dannym’s Captain Gideon val Mallonwey and the men he commanded bolstered Trell’s numbers. The Nadori commander Lazar hal’Hamaadi brought knowledge of the surrounding territory as well as additional soldiers, weapons and ample supplies. Trell’s own men contributed ingenuity and an unwavering faith in his command...all of which he was putting towards freeing the rest of his father’s men from the warlord holding them.

  This latter was the mission occupying their forces at present.

  Up ahead on the road, Loukas n’Abraxis came riding around a bend. The Avataren combat engineer was one of many among Trell’s company of Converted who was acting as a scout.

  They’d been skirmishing with the warlord’s men for the past several days. The warlord had been doing his best to lead them into ambushes or otherwise astray of his stronghold, but Lazar possessed details of its location—likewise Tannour, from his interrogation of the wielder Kifat—so they remained undeterred, and their progress steady.

  Since the last skirmish two days ago, they’d seen neither hide nor hair of the warlord’s men. Now Trell’s army was crammed into a thirty-mile pass with no exit until they reached the valley surrounding the warlord’s mountain fortress. The pass was the only route in or out of the valley. They couldn’t be too careful.

  Trell trotted Gendaia forward to meet Loukas.

  The Avataren swept his auburn hair out of his eyes and held it back from the constant wind. “Saran reported in,” he said as Trell neared, referencing their lead scout. “He said you won’t like what lies ahead.”

  “He hasn’t liked what lies behind,” Tannour interjected from close behind Trell. He’d rarely let Trell out of his sight since they’d left Khor Taran. Trell wasn’t sure whether to be offended or flattered by Tannour’s attentions.

  The Vestian had an arsenal of weapons strapped to the vest he wore over his desert robes. As usual, he had his headscarf twisted about his ebony hair and shoulders in the fashion of his eastern homeland. He looked formidable.

  Loukas shifted his green eyes to Tannour, and his gaze tightened. Whatever ill arrow had pierced the two men, the wound was still festering. He looked back to Trell and added with that hollow edge to his tone which always seemed to accompany Tannour’s presence, “Saran says it would be better to find another road.”

  “Which he knows we cannot.” Trell frowned through an exhale. “Did he say what he found?”

  “No, but I heard him mutter that the warlord is praying to Ha’viv.”

  “That can’t be good.” In the vernacular of the desert tribes, praying to Ha’viv was the equivalent of working black magic.

  Rolan Lamodaar trotted his horse forward to join their impromptu conference and now remarked from Trell’s left, “Saran.” He gave a disagreeable snort. “That knobby bastard can’t stop talking about his bloody horse, but when you need words out of him, he’s as close-mouthed as a fortune-teller who hasn’t been paid.”

  “You look like a fortune-teller,” Tannour remarked with a half-smile twitching his lips.

  To his point, Rolan was dressed to the nines in a flowing violet kaftan trimmed two hands thick with thread of gold embroidery, and with a fat ruby gleaming from the center of his agal—never mind the other jewels he regularly wore about his person.

  Rolan turned a taunting grin on the Vestian. “Remind me again what happened to that inheritance of yours, Valeri?”

  “Rich or poor, all men lie in the same size graves, Lamodaar,” Tannour replied coolly.

  Trell meanwhile focused on Loukas. “Any word from Lazar?” The Nadori al-Amir was leading his own party of scouts far in advance of the main host.

  Loukas shook his head.

  Rolan grunted. “Azerjaiman’s winds, but the man doesn’t make it easy. If he wasn’t my own countryman...”

  “Go on and say it.” Tannour arched a brow in challenge. “We’re all thinking it.”

  “I’m not thinking it,” Trell said.

  “Which is why we’re thinking it for you, A’dal.” Tannour lifted his gaze and studied the mountain ridge. “Lazar could be leading us into a trap right now. For all we know, he could be in league with this warlord.”

  “Retribution for destroying his fortress,” Loukas said quietly, though he looked sheepish about speaking the thought aloud.

  “We spoke beneath Jai’Gar’s eye,” Trell reminded Tannour. “That matters to a man of honor.”

  “With respect, A’dal, how do we know Lazar hal’Hamaadi is a man of honor?”

  Trell held Tannour’s gaze firmly. “We assume it until he proves himself otherwise. That’s the only way we’ll ever be able to work together.”

  “No offense, A’dal, but that’s the way to get yourself quickly relieved of your purse—or your head—in Vest.”

  “Vest is a province of cutthroats and thieves,” Loukas grumbled.

  Tannour’s eyes flashed to him. “Says the scion of the biggest thieves in all the realm.”

  “What do you know of it?” Loukas hissed back, the fire to Tannour’s ice. “You drank their poison readily enough when they offered it in scented wine.”

  Tannour mockingly gave Loukas the Avataren sign of Obeisance, which earned him a glare in return.

  Rolan chuckled. “Who needs a cock fight for entertainment when you can throw these two into a ring together, eh?” He scratched idly under his chin, wiggling the three jeweled braids of his beard in the process. “The troops have been marching for four turns of the glass now, A’dal. Some of Gideon’s men are starting to sway.”

  Trell took his meaning. Whatever they were going to face ahead, it was probably better for the men to face it rested and refreshed.

  “Let’s signal a halt. We’ll break for twenty lashes of the wind.”

  But instead of heading off, Rolan just grinned at him.

  Trell gave him a curious look. “What?”

  Rolan waggled a jeweled forefinger. “It never ceases to amaze, your command of our tongue.” He looked Trell over voluminously. “Are you certain Inithiya isn’t whispering in your ear each night?”

  Tannour grunted. “It never ceases to amaze, how you blaspheme your own gods.”

  Rolan shifted his dark eyes and a wide smile to the Vestian. “Inanna and I have an understanding.”

  “For your sake, I hope the Goddess of War’s understanding matches your own.”

  �
�What do you care, Valeri? You don’t pray to our gods.” Rolan’s bushy brows shot heavenward in a great showing of dubiety. “You barely pray to your own gods.”

  “No one prays to the Ghost Kings,” Tannour hissed darkly.

  “The troops, Rolan,” Trell reminded him.

  Still grinning, Rolan pressed a fist to his heart. “Your will, A’dal.” He spun his horse in a billowing of silk robes and cantered back towards the main host.

  Trell returned his gaze to the road ahead and let out a slow exhale.

  He wondered what Saran had found that required such a warning. And he wondered how he was ever going to engender the camaraderie so common among the Converted—an esprit de corps that frequently made the impossible possible—among so many men with disparate beliefs and backgrounds.

  Naiadithine had bound every man who’d witnessed Her mirror to Her divine cause, but this did not automatically make them all trust one another, or even agree on the right course of action.

  As case in point, Captain Gideon val Mallonwey of Dannym was insisting that they rescue the rest of the king’s men, his brothers in arms, and return posthaste to Nahavand, where His Majesty’s troops were collecting. The Converted commander Raegus n’Harnalt was pushing strongly for them to return immediately to Raku to aid the Emir in the conflict there. Rolan Lamodaar, a prince in his own right, was insistent that the only way to end the war would be by ending Radov; while his countryman, the Nadori commander and al-Amir Lazar hal’Hamaadi, refused to speak of any further action until they’d eliminated the warlord.

  Since the latter was still holding five hundred Dannish soldiers captive, this was the one course of action everyone could agree upon.

  Somehow, by the time they rescued his father’s men, Trell had to forge an unbreakable alliance among the soldiers, officers and disenfranchised princes in charge of his current forces, for if they were still divided when they added another five hundred voices to the vote, he feared his nascent army would fracture.

  The horns had just finished sounding the halt up and down the lines when the rolling chorus of a thousand male voices shouting in alarm reached Trell’s ears. He spun in his saddle to see a shadow overcoming the long line of troops, whereupon he followed their gazes to the heavens.