The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  He was suddenly glad he’d thought to drag Torqin along like a dog at his heels. If anyone had to be sacrificed to the god of Dore Madden’s lunacy, Torqin could fill the need.

  Viernan spied the wielder across the room aggrievedly. “Tell the Advisor of the catastrophe you caused by thinking, Torqin.”

  Torqin’s eyes shifted angrily between Viernan and Dore. Ha’viv teach him to spit, but the obstinate man clearly still thought his actions justified!

  Torquin straightened away from the wall. “The Consul instructed us to use the matrix when the six Sundragons were assemb—”

  “Yes, yes, the Advisor knows all of that,” Viernan snapped. “Tell him what happened.”

  Torqin stared back at Viernan through agate eyes of accusation.

  “Well?” Viernan glared at the wielder. “What are you waiting for? A hail of trumpets?”

  Torqin clenched his jaw. “Everything seemed to be going to plan at first. We saw the dragons take their human forms upon the wall...”

  The best laid plans, indeed. Viernan recalled the beginning so fondly...the sweet sounds of clashing swords, the unending rain of arrows, trebuchets exploding against the walls of Raku...

  The dragons had taken to the skies, whereupon Torqin and the other Shamshir’im had launched Leyd’s matrix. The instant the patterns hit the creatures, they’d vanished from the skies—much to Viernan’s amazement. He really hadn’t expected it to work, Leyd being...well, Leyd.

  Then Radov had gleefully released Dore’s eidola, and half a hundred black-skinned demons had clambered over living and dead to reach the walls. By Inanna’s wrath, it had been beautiful!

  The eidola had barreled through the Emir’s Converted on an avalanche path to find al-Basir himself. For a time, it appeared likely the disgusting creatures would win the day for the Ruling Prince all by themselves.

  Then she had fallen out of the heavens in a missile of flame—the drachwyr called Mithaiya—and abruptly the tide of battle had shifted.

  Viernan had grabbed his prince the moment he realized a Sundragon had returned—albeit getting Radov out of his tent without his entire supply of absinthe had proven almost as strenuous as the subsequent flight through the desert—and summoned Torqin from the camp at Ramala.

  They had just rendezvoused atop the Ramala escarpment when Viernan felt a surge in the currents. He spun his head towards the front, a few miles distant, and beheld a clear view of the unfolding drama.

  He saw first al-Basir’s Converted inexplicably retreating into the lower walls of the mountain oasis, drawing Radov’s forces in chase.

  Then waves of wavering air rose up at the base of those walls, where Radov’s forward ranks were amassing. The band of wavering air widened until it formed a moat along the entire length of the oasis, encompassing countless hundreds of Prince Radov’s men.

  And then...

  The soldiers caught within that band of wavering air simply evaporated.

  One instant they were beating at the walls; the next they’d been reduced to clouds of ash. The sand around the oasis started boiling.

  M’Nador’s lines erupted into chaos. Chaos soon became a rout.

  Viernan watched as the heat radiating from the boiling moat overcame the fleeing army. Men simply burst into flames. Soldiers fell in domino waves, cooked in their melting armor. Viernan had heard the echoes of their screams, miles distant.

  The decimated army finally cleared the danger zone, retreating wildly to the inept blaring of distant horns, scattering like thieves before a mounted patrol.

  Stunned, Viernan had scanned his gaze along what had become a miles-long lake of boiling sand, telltale of a drachwyr’s wrath. On the Raku side lay a thin stripe of baked earth edging the sandstone walls. On the Nadori side spread a downed forest of charred bodies. Not since Björn van Gelderan worked his craft upon those plains had Viernan seen so much death from a single act of will.

  He was very glad he’d left when he did.

  Now, beneath Ivarnen’s sunset light, Viernan eyed Torqin blackly as the man stuttered and mumbled his way through the narrative. He wondered if the wielder thought he was actually going to live more than a few tortured weeks beyond this night. Perhaps Viernan would put him in the same dungeon cell where he’d nailed Trell val Lorian to the wall.

  “...and so, the Consul fle—I mean, came here, with our prince and myself,” Torqin finished in an unmistakably supercilious tone, as if he would have stayed to fight a Sundragon by himself. Viernan was eager to skin the hubris out of him, one strip of flesh at a time.

  Slow clapping drew the Consul’s eye across the room.

  At some point during Torqin’s recounting, the zanthyr Leyd had deigned to join them. He slouched now in a wing chair with one leg thrown over the arm. Outfitted like a prince, he wore a wine-velvet coat open over black pants, his white shirt unbuttoned, and a silken irreverence that mocked the gods who’d created him.

  Leyd abraded Torqin with a razor-edged smile while he clapped. “What an impressive show of cloddish incompetence. A farce truly befitting your Ruling Prince.” His emerald gaze shifted to a snoring Radov with derisive amusement.

  Viernan regarded him astringently. “Have you come merely to gloat, or to provide some useful counsel?”

  “I counseled you well enough the first time, old man. It isn’t my doing if your Shamshir’im fleas can’t count to six.”

  Viernan stared blackly at him. “We have no proof the dragon that returned wasn’t one who’d been among those banished. Mayhap your matrix did not work as promised.”

  “If so, it was because you handed over a divine pattern to be implemented by oafs.”

  Torqin bristled. “I’m a bracketed wielder and you dare call me—”

  “A bracketed wielder!” Leyd clapped a hand to his cheek. “A whole bracket of Sormitáge rings!? Oh, I’m just creaming my britches at the very thought of your preeminence! I’ll bet you have the best toothless whore in Tal’Shira sucking your cock.” He rose from his chair and glided towards the sideboard, flaying the wielder with his smile along the way. “At least we know you can count to five.”

  Viernan eyed Leyd irritably as the zanthyr helped himself to a drink and Torqin shriveled back into sullen silence. “You might apply yourself to some useful occupation by giving us the means to rid ourselves of the remaining dragon.”

  Leyd turned to lean back against the cabinet, glass in hand. “What do you think I do all day, old man, just hang around devising patterns for your pleasure?”

  “Probably from your toes,” Viernan replied beneath a caustic stare. “You certainly dispense excrement with a bat’s singular prowess.”

  He smirked at Viernan while he sipped his drink. “You know, every time I see you, old man, you remind me more and more of the mummified kings of Cyrene in their crypt.”

  “They would doubtless provide company preferable to yours.”

  Leyd chuckled. “You have the redeeming quality of always underestimating your limitations. It makes for grand entertainment.” He downed his drink and poured another.

  Viernan turned an accusatory stare on Dore. “I came here to ensure you carried through on your end of our accord, Dore Madden, not to be accosted by uppity rodents and creatures infamous for turning on their own maker.”

  “The Prophet is not insensitive to your losses, Viernan.” Dore settled his bony frame in an armchair, reminding Viernan of a skeleton propped by the door to scare children on All Hallow’s Eve. “But making an enemy of a Sundragon is no trifling matter.”

  Viernan fumed. “Don’t condescend to lecture me. You were the one who devised this ill-fated plan and bewitched my prince into accord with it!”

  “I can see he needed great spellcraft to guide his mind to the matter,” Leyd remarked drolly while Radov snored.

  Viernan kept his gaze fixed on Dore, despite his finger-twitching urge to throttle the zanthyr. “If M’Nador has any hope of a further siege of Raku, that dragon must be dispensed with
—as you swore to do.” Furious, Viernan spun and paced away.

  He wondered why he bothered anymore, in truth. The oasis was lost. That boiling lake foiled their chances as surely as if a hundred Sundragons swarmed the skies.

  The only saving grace was that Radov had not been in command of the day. M’Nador’s Council of Princes would have to blame the disaster on the other commanders and exonerate Radov; but the Ruling Prince needed to find a massive bargaining chip to bring to the table. Only then might his throne be re-secured. Of course, other princes would be working feverishly to do the same. They were just as desperate to usurp the throne as Radov was to keep it.

  No...as Viernan was to keep it. This thought struck him like a spear through the chest.

  Dore sipped at his drink. “Regrettably, Viernan, Leyd’s matrix was only useful once. Now the she-beast will be alert and will shield herself from further attack of this ilk.”

  Leyd snorted contemptuously. “You have bigger problems than keeping this inebriate’s throne pinned beneath your thumb, old man. Don’t you realize Mithaiya will be after you now? You’re the next link in the chain back to me.”

  Leyd actually seemed energized by the prospect of being hunted by a Sundragon. Inanna’s blood, but the creature was an insult to his own immortality.

  The zanthyr sauntered back to his wingchair with a crystal glass in one hand and a decanter in the other. He sprawled lazily in his seat, draping a leg over one upholstered arm again, and set the decanter on the floor. “Mithaiya knows her First Lord can unwork the patterns that banished her siblings if she brings my matrix back to him. Björn will take one look at it and poof!” Leyd blew across his fingers. “Instant drachwyr. Mark my words, she’ll be hunting it—and that is to say, specifically, she’ll be hunting you and me.” He leaned back and sipped his drink, looking inordinately pleased.

  “This matter must be dealt with cunningly, Viernan.” Dore’s gaze had taken on an unhealthy gleam, which could only mean he’d thought up some appalling new idea.

  Viernan pinned a dark eye on him. “This Sundragon made charcoal of your Prophet’s so-called secret weapons and decimated M’Nador’s main host.”

  “Well, I did warn you.” Leyd grinned at him. “The drachwyr always considered themselves peacekeepers, but now that you’ve stirred up the anthill by attacking them...” he gave a low whistle and shook his patronizing head.

  Viernan was reminded of why he despised zanthyrs in general and Leyd in particular. He was the kind of hateful creature who would sink the entire ship and all of its crew to ensure the success of his own suicide.

  Viernan settled a slicing gaze upon the creature. “You might inconvenience yourself and take care of the matter for us entirely—or is your gloating all boast and no brawn?”

  Leyd spread his arms expansively. “I am otherwise occupied at present.”

  “Doing what, pray?” Viernan looked a critical eye over Leyd’s state of undress. “Renting by the hour?”

  “Leyd has been taking advantage of the Prophet’s hospitality,” Dore said.

  “Taking advantage of his absence, no doubt.”

  “The man has an impressive closet,” Leyd plucked at his jacket as case in point, “and a surprisingly comfortable bed, if you can stand the reek of his patterns everywhere.”

  Viernan intoned dolefully, “A truth of nature: a predator leaves and the vermin scurry in to sniff for crumbs.”

  Leyd leveled him an acid smile. “I wonder...if they cut you open, old man, will they find all your blood has turned to vinegar?”

  Dore downed the last of his drink. “Actually, Viernan, Leyd has been quite helpful in restoring order in Tambarré in the wake of the Prophet’s absence.” He strode to refresh his drink with the long steps of a confident man, an effect quite ruined by his scuffing heels. It was like watching a marionette puppeteered by Death, a grotesque pairing of poise with the preposterous.

  “Helpful.” Never had the word commanded so many vague and ambiguous definitions as when applied to Leyd’s activities. Viernan was loath to image how Dore Madden defined helpful, or the calamity the wielder could devise with a zanthyr at his beck and call.

  “Events progress, Viernan.” Dore splashed bourbon into his glass and walked to the windows, still attempting to project that commanding air. It was unnerving.

  He leaned a bony shoulder against the windowsill and gazed out across the darkening estuary. “The Prophet severed his connection with his Marquiin before absconding into the aether—or didn’t you hear that the temple was in turmoil for some time? Many of the Marquiin went mad and threw themselves from the walls. The others had to be contained, lest they bring further harm to themselves and other of the Prophet’s devoted followers. It became incumbent upon me to invest them with new purpose.”

  Viernan ranked his interest in Bethamin’s deranged pets somewhere between the number of brick-layers in Tal’Shira and how many shites he took in a day. He found Dore’s strange manner and what it boded far more disturbing.

  “Viernan, have you considered that perhaps it’s time to give up this quest for Raku?” Dore cast a look and the question over his shoulder with the same idle interest he might’ve shown in inquiring of the weather. “A wielder must know when the effect of his causation cannot be achieved.”

  Upon hearing the familiar phrase, Viernan’s flesh tried to crawl off his bones.

  He suddenly recognized the persona Dore was trying to wear like the ill-fitting skin of a larger man. The borrowed mannerisms, the unusual clothing, which suited Dore as ineptly as the cavalier air and the self-assured confidence...

  Dore was mimicking Arion Tavestra, the man he most hated and despised—and clearly had no idea he was doing it.

  Never had the man’s madness been more apparent.

  “You see it now, don’t you, old man?” Leyd’s apocalyptic tone told Viernan the zanthyr was speaking to his thoughts rather than to Dore’s question. He saluted Viernan with his glass. “To the doom on the horizon.” Then he downed his drink and vanished the crystal in a whisper of mist.

  A sting of the fifth washed past Viernan on the currents.

  He could not say why—perhaps from the niggling ghosts of his own fears, which he kept incarcerated in darkness like enemy spies and uppity foreign princes; or from the certainty that Leyd sought his own death as surely as widespread calamity and would drag everyone near him down into the maelstrom as he succumbed; or perhaps from the ghoulish caricature of Arion Tavestra that Dore was parading before him—but Viernan suddenly felt the cold tendrils of foreboding icing his veins.

  “You were right to come to us, your allies, Viernan.” Dore’s pink tongue slid slowly along his papery lips. The sunset glimmer coming through the windows cast him in a sepulchral light. “The she-beast will have difficulty indeed if she comes here in search of you. But clearly, clearly then, you must stay here to ensure she cannot find you.”

  As if on cue, a procession of ashen-shrouded Marquiin entered the room, all of them holding Merdanti blades glowing an unearthly violet-silver.

  Viernan speared an accusatory stare at Dore. “What is the meaning of this?” He scanned the room, noting a bristling Torqin, the procession of faceless Marquiin, and Leyd, who was idly flipping a Merdanti dagger and catching it by the blade. His fingertips were weeping blood onto the marble floor. Viernan watched him mouth the words, How does he do it?

  “A ten-day is all it takes now, Viernan.” Dore smiled grimly as one of the Marquiin shoved Torqin towards the center of the room, where Viernan stood pinned by disbelief.

  “At Tal’Afaq we used the old patterns, which took nearly a moon, but these new ones...they are a marvel. A marvel, Viernan.” The delight in Dore’s expression was indescribable.

  He came away from the window to join Viernan and Torqin within the encroaching circle of Marquiin, and looked Viernan over with that lunatic smile. “Leave everything to me.”

  Beside Viernan, Torqin summoned the fifth.

&nbs
p; “Don’t be a fool!” Viernan well recognized the power radiating off those blades. It was the Prophet’s power; the same power that had turned his once magnificent Ruling Prince into a dribbling inebriate terrified of his own reflection.

  “Yes, nothing to fear, nothing to fear.” Dore looked Torqin over like he was assessing a carcass for the best cuts of meat. “We’re all allies here. The Marquiin are only here for your protection, you understand. Ivarnen...” the tip of his pink tongue made an unpleasant showing, “Ivarnen has its own dangers.” Then he motioned them all away, still wearing that awful smile.

  Two Marquiin lifted Radov from his chair and led the procession out of the room, dragging the slumbering prince between them. As Viernan was being escorted away, he realized his earlier estimation had been far off the mark.

  The maelstrom was already sucking him down.

  Six

  “If it looks like a dragon and talks like a dragon,

  it might be something else entirely.”

  –A popular Malchiarri joke

  The spy trudged up the hill from the stream with two water pails sloshing from the beam he balanced across his shoulders and the wind drowning out even the sounds of the rushing river. He turned sideways to inch between two boulders, and the wind died to a whisper. A downy moss grew there between the rocks, proof that the sun never found its way into that crevasse. Nor, then, prying eyes. Perfect.

  He set down his load and pushed hands into his pockets. When he removed them and opened his fingers, each palm held an identical ring, yet they linked to very different masters.

  He’d had a harrowing start, managing the two rings, until he’d learned to tell them apart by feel, finding minute differences in the onyx stones and their plain silver settings; until he’d learned how to differentiate his perception of the minds hovering on the other end of the bonded pairs—before contacting the master of each ring.