The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  The dragon’s wingspan nearly touched the opposing ridges as it soared high inside the pass, coming towards them. Even with thunderheads amassing between themselves and the sun, its metallic hide dazzled, leaving spots before Trell’s eyes.

  The Dannish and Nadori soldiers were in an uproar. They only knew the Sundragons as death from the skies.

  Rolan immediately set off in a canter towards the distant form of Gideon val Mallonwey, who was standing in his stirrups with his hand on his sword, looking stormy enough to signal a charge.

  “Who is it this time, do you think?” Loukas squinted towards the approaching Sundragon.

  “One of the females,” Tannour murmured.

  Trell turned him a look. “How do you know that?” He wondered if Tannour’s ability to speak the language of Air somehow conveyed this truth to him.

  Tannour glanced to him. “The males have different shaped tails.”

  “You would notice something like that,” Loukas said absently.

  Tannour aimed a stiletto stare at him. “I notice everything.”

  “It wasn’t a criticism, Tannour.” Loukas flung a glare at him. “Fiera’s breath, you’re so touchy.”

  The moment she soared above them, the massive dragon vanished in a cloud of blinding light. Trell ducked his head towards his shoulder to spare his vision from the assault, while Loukas gave a muted curse, and Tannour a darker one. Both men pressed palms to their eyes.

  The intense shimmering of elemental energy rapidly dispersed—coalesced? Trell couldn’t exactly describe the manifestation—and a golden form plummeted out of the sky.

  She landed in a shockwave of sound that blew back their hair and panicked the horses. Only Gendaia stood her ground, though she did shake out her mane and paw at the earth with a snort of protest.

  Mithaiya rose out of a crouch before them.

  She wore her fighting blacks with a dragon-hilted greatsword looming behind one shoulder. Her raven hair hung wild and long about her arms. The expression on her beautiful face was severe. The War Goddess Inanna could have presented no fiercer impression of power.

  Trell dismounted into a pervasive silence, which seemed to have stilled even the wailing wind. He bowed in greeting. “Lady Mithaiya.”

  “Trell of the Tides.” Her blue eyes scanned Trell, then Loukas and Tannour, who had also hastily dismounted, then moved beyond to the long chain of men crowded into the pass, all of whom were staring at her. “Your forces appear to have grown.”

  “Jai’Gar willing they will grow again, my lady. I believe I shall need them.”

  Mithaiya assessed the gathering, emanating urgency and concern...and fury. This in exponential measure. Trell couldn’t see elae’s currents, but he could feel the power radiating out of her, serrated and deadly, like the inside of a lightning storm.

  Loukas must’ve sensed it also, for he took two slow steps in retreat, while Tannour stood rigidly in place with tension binding his gaze.

  The sound of cantering horses preceded Rolan and Raegus arriving with Gideon val Mallonwey. The three commanders came to an abrupt, unexpected halt when the horses suddenly refused to come any closer.

  Raegus cursed his beast and slung himself off to hurry forward. Rolan followed more sedately, while Gideon dismounted and remained by his horse, staring hard.

  Mithaiya shifted her attention back to Trell. He felt the force of her gaze fix and hold upon him, as if she was binding new threads of the mortal tapestry to him with her eyes alone, as if the entire pattern was turning on an axis around her. She widened her attention marginally to include the others as she told them, “The battle for Raku is over.”

  This drew an audible intake of breath from everyone within earshot—which was a considerable number, for Mithaiya had made no secret of her statement.

  She looked to each of Trell’s assembled commanders with meaning. “Where Radov will turn the eye of his greed now, I cannot say, but the oasis will never again fall prey to his avarice.”

  “Jai’Gar be praised!” Raegus clapped a hand on Rolan’s shoulder, and the Nadori prince turned him a voluminous look in return. Meanwhile, the news spread in a susurrant hum through the ranks.

  Trell heard this with two hearts, for while he rejoiced on behalf of his father the Emir, he couldn’t erase the image of his father the king sinking beneath the water. He forced back his emotion with a swallow.

  “Mithaiya...we saw—all of us—what happened at the sacred spring.”

  “It remains vivid in your thoughts,” she agreed.

  “My father—”

  “Lives.” The barest trace of a smile softened her gaze.

  Trell’s breath left him in a forceful exhale of incredulity.

  The others exchanged faces of confusion.

  Gideon shoved roughly forward. “We saw His Majesty fall!” Grief and fury twisted his expression, which revealed more than its share of distrust. “I pray you tell us how it is he lives, lady!”

  Mithaiya’s eyes switched to him, hot as the bluest flames of a forge. “He lives by my own grace and is the better for it, Gideon val Mallonwey.” Her tone implied that Gideon had best not challenge her again, or he might find himself in quite the opposite state.

  The captain staggered back—perhaps from the force of her tone, the shock of her news, or simply that she’d known his name—while the news of King Gydryn’s miraculous survival swept noisily through the ranks. When it reached the men of Dannym, they cheered.

  Mithaiya returned the weight of her attention to Trell. “Your father and Prince Farid prepare to depart for Nahavand. Farid goes with the king to help him to take his army north, and home. Would that I had more time to brief you, but my brothers and sister are gone. I alone remain to anchor the tapestry.”

  “Gone.” The word struck like a knife to Trell’s gut. “Mithaiya—how?”

  Molten fury flared in her eyes. “Forced into the future. Lost in time. I must find the wielder responsible for the working and gain the pattern he used. Pray you with me, Trell, that the Mage will be able to unwork it.”

  Stunned to the point of unbalance, Trell felt suddenly that Mithaiya’s blistering gaze was the only thing anchoring him to reality. What wielder was powerful enough to banish the Sundragons? Who would even know how?

  He shook his head wordlessly. “What can I do to aid you?”

  “You know already what the Mage requires of you.”

  Trell’s brow furrowed. “To end the war.”

  “Just so. Radov will have to abandon his goal of reclaiming Raku now, but this war is greater than one man’s greed. The entire game balances upon the head of a pin, Trell. Those of us fighting for the Mage must act fast and decisively to tip the field in our favor.”

  “We’re upon that very task, Lady Mithaiya. By chance, have you any information on the warlord we’re hunting or his stronghold?”

  “I regret I do not. My eye has rarely surveyed this part of the conflict, and now it must remain on finding the wielder responsible.”

  “I understand.”

  She expanded her gaze to include everyone standing near. “You are tasked with ending this war. I have done my part. The rest is up to you.”

  Reeling a bit, Trell pressed a fist to his heart. “Your will, my lady.”

  “No, Trell.” Mithaiya pinned him beneath her stare. “It is Cephrael’s will we act upon—yourself, the Mage, all of us. Never forget that.”

  Tannour hissed something under his breath that made Mithaiya arch a brow at him.

  Trell held her gaze. “I won’t fail him, Mithaiya.”

  The barest smile touched her lips. “I am certain you won’t.” She looked over the others then, assessing each in turn, her gaze speaking to whatever truths they held in their own souls...demanding obedience in spite of them.

  Then she looked heavenward and vanished in a geyser of kaleidoscopic light.

  Everyone spun their eyes away. When Trell finally blinked the spots from his vision, Mithaiya’s dragon
form was soaring over the mountains and was quickly lost to view.

  The wind tore through in the wake of her departure, twice as blustery as before.

  Thunderous discussion erupted among the men.

  Two turns of the glass later, Trell was still pondering the ramifications of Mithaiya’s news when he discovered what Saran had tried to warn him about.

  He and his commanders found the scout waiting for them in the middle of the trail. Leaving the bulk of the troops behind at rest, they followed Saran over a rise, where the wind died and the view opened. Now the five commanders sat their horses, once again stunned to silence.

  Trell stared across the smoking remains of a forest, with acrid haze burning his eyes and regret his conscience. Impaled high upon the shaved tops of trees, the charred bodies of men formed a macabre canopy. The mountainside lay black before them, the churning clouds blurred by haze. Neither were as dark as his anger.

  Just as many bodies were nailed to the trees as had been impaled atop them, and even after ravaging by fire, it was clear that their deaths had not been kind.

  In front of them, words had been spelled out in blood, but the fire had claimed much of what had been written there. The only letters clearly left were:

  DEPTHS TO DIE PRIN

  Something in them gave Trell a chill of memory.

  Loukas emerged out of the drifting smoke with one of the Nadori scouts at his side.

  Trell’s hands tightened on his reins. “Is the armor Dannish?”

  Loukas met his gaze, nodded.

  Gideon hissed a curse.

  Trell scanned the smoking hillside. “How many?”

  Loukas pushed his auburn hair back from his face and turned a solemn look over his shoulder. “Close to a hundred.”

  One hundred men.

  “It is impossible to say if all or any of these men belonged to your king father, A’dal,” the Nadori scout, Kalid, pointed out. “The warlord is known for these games. His reputation is as black as his skin is rumored to be, but not so black as his heart by far. Still, even for one such as him, there’s little need to seed a fire with valuable hostages just to sow dark dreams among the living.”

  “But their armor—” Gideon protested.

  “Can be put on more than one man, Captain,” Kalid pointed out.

  “He means to undermine our morale,” Raegus growled.

  The dark-eyed Kalid looked soberly to him. “But he doesn’t need to waste knights to do it.”

  “It’s still a hundred men,” Trell said quietly.

  One hundred souls with dreams, desires...perhaps families. One hundred threads burned out of the tapestry just to make a point.

  “If these aren’t the men of Dannym,” Tannour murmured, “then who are they?”

  Rolan turned him a significant look. “Our missing villagers?”

  Tannour arched brows by way of replying, Could be.

  “Fethe, so all this time we were chasing the wrong hare?” Raegus spat to the side. “The Saldarians weren’t the ones taking the villagers—the warlord was?”

  “Or the Saldarians were taking them for the warlord,” Tannour suggested.

  Loukas shook his head. “We don’t know what the Saldarians were doing with the villagers they took, Tannour.”

  “Well, they certainly weren’t teaching them to sew, Loukas,” Tannour returned shortly.

  Rolan scratched at the underside of his beard. “So the Saldarian camp we found...”

  Trell suspected he was recalling the scene Raegus had described to him the day he’d arrived—a Saldarian camp where dozens of men, women and children were being trampled beneath the mercenaries’ horses, making sport of the innocent.

  Raegus said, “It would follow, I suppose. The Saldarians hadn’t yet delivered the villagers to the warlord when we came upon them. Might’ve even been waiting on a Nodefinder to arrive to claim the folk, and the man finally showed up as we were routing the bastards—that’s how they all vanished without a trace.”

  “But what would this warlord be doing with so many villagers?” Rolan wanted to know.

  “Besides making pin cushions of them?” Loukas muttered.

  Tannour absently fingered one of the dagger hilts extending from his vest. “I’ll be sure to ask him that before I sacrifice him to the Ghost Kings.”

  Loukas shot him a grim stare of reproach.

  “You presume you’ll be the one to slay the warlord,” said a deep voice from further along the hill.

  Trell turned in his saddle to see Lazar hal’Hamaadi riding out of the smoke like a ghostly king coming to claim his revenge. Five other spectral riders trailed in his wake.

  The al-Amir of Khor Taran and all of his men had discarded their formal Nadori uniforms for studded leather jerkins, long to their thighs, over copper lamellar-mail shirts. Instead of the keffiyehs of their tribes, they wore black headscarves bound with leather.

  Lazar’s men waited while the al-Amir guided his horse down towards Trell’s group.

  Tannour sprouted a mocking half-smile as Lazar joined them. “Should we flip a coin for the privilege, hal’Hamaadi?”

  Lazar eyed him speculatively. “The gods choose their own champions, airwalker.”

  “Inanna be praised it’s so,” Rolan said by way of grinning agreement.

  Raegus eyed all three of them doubtfully. “I don’t care who runs the bastard through, so long as it’s bloody and final.”

  Tannour looked back to Trell. “We must presume from this that the warlord knows you’re coming, A’dal.”

  “We’re a thousand men marching towards his fortress, Tannour. I would only be surprised if he didn’t know we were coming.”

  “Respectfully, A’dal, my point is that this isn’t a message for a nameless army of men.” Tannour held Trell’s gaze while extending a hand towards the carnage facing them. “These men are wearing Dannish armor. This is clearly a message to you.”

  “Fethe, you’re right.” Raegus swore.

  “That’s why he burned them...” Loukas spoke the realization aloud. When he saw that the others had gone silent upon hearing his words, he explained, “I kept asking myself, why did he burn them? But the warlord had to do it to be sure we couldn't identify them, because they’re not from Dannym. Otherwise the Dannish troops would’ve recognized that these weren’t their own men.”

  Raegus threw up his arms. “How does this bloody warlord-king-of-nowhere know Your Highness is leading our fethen army?”

  “The warlord and the wielder were in collusion,” Lazar offered. “Long has the shite of these two weasels been raising a stink in my back yard.”

  Tannour shook his head. “Kifat didn’t tell the warlord of the A’dal’s presence among our company.”

  The certainty limning this statement dissuaded them from pressing for an explanation; none of them wanted to hear the details Tannour would happily give them.

  “So are we all thinking the same thing?” Raegus scanned those assembled. “We still have a spy among us?” He sounded justifiably aggrieved.

  “And now he’s reporting to the warlord instead of Viernan hal’Jaitar?” Loukas sounded dubious.

  “Or he and the warlord share the same master,” Tannour said, “or he’s been reporting to two separate masters all along. Double agents are common in spycraft.”

  “Well, you would know,” Loukas muttered, earning a cold stare from Tannour in return.

  Gideon asked, “What does it matter who the spy serves? We’re near to finding the warlord and His Majesty’s men. Surely this abominable scene proves the man’s desperation, his fear of the power our forces will bring to bear against him.”

  “Perhaps,” Trell said quietly, still pondering those strange words written in blood, which brought a hollow feeling to his chest, “or perhaps it proves him truly mad. We don’t yet know our enemy, and that troubles me.”

  “Fethen Shamshir’im,” Raegus grumbled.

  Trell surveyed the smoking forest, working the musc
les of his jaw, thinking through everything he knew...and how much more he needed to learn. Was he still battling Viernan hal’Jaitar, or had he ascended to some new plateau of the game where another player reigned supreme?

  Whoever stood behind the warlord, the latter was proving himself enemy enough.

  “Let’s assume the same spy is reporting to the warlord.” Trell settled hands on the pommel of his saddle and his gaze on his commanders. “Let’s say the spy and the Saldarians both served the same master. Unless he has a fortress the size of a small city hidden in these mountains, the warlord can’t be harboring my father’s men and hundreds of missing villagers. My bet is the villagers are being moved on elsewhere—ostensibly to whoever the warlord serves in turn.”

  “He does Huhktu’s darkest work and serves none other, if the tales be true, Trell of the Tides,” Lazar said. “Those of my men who’ve clashed with him or his forces have brought back stories of brutality, of necromancy. They say he is undead, that he cannot be killed because death has already claimed him.”

  “The skirmishes have been bloody on both sides,” Gideon said by way of agreement. “It would appear the warlord prefers a wild broadsword charge, no matter how many of his own men he loses in the assault.”

  “We assuredly need more intelligence on him,” Trell agreed, nodding to both of them. “But my attention just now is on the spy.”

  “Fair enough,” Gideon said. “What are your thoughts, Your Highness?”

  “If we work from the premise that the spy was somehow involved with the missing villagers, it would follow that he was reporting on your movements all along, Raegus,” and Trell nodded to the former A’dal. “Likely he was in touch with both the Saldarians and the warlord. Perhaps he was even working closely with the Saldarians, specifically manipulating circumstances to lead your company astray of the villages until the Saldarians could empty them, somehow ensuring you arrived too late. Whatever the truth, there is assuredly a collaboration at work behind the scenes.”

  “I’m eager to gut this bastard,” Raegus grumbled.

  “Get in line, n’Harnalt,” Tannour murmured.