The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  Breathtaking beauty.

  Sinárr made spectacular landscapes, but even he paid homage to Rafael.

  Just before the lake fell off the edge of the world, the bridge angled upwards to a white palace perched on the mountainside. As they climbed, the view expanded to overlook the floating city and its immense backdrop of planet and sky.

  The bridge ended at a terrace, where Ean and Darshan stood beside a life-sized statue with golden wings. It wasn’t until the statue moved that Tanis realized it was Rafael.

  The Warlock turned to greet them as they arrived. He was wearing a jeweled white kurta that morning, with his impressive golden wings spreading behind him, framing his physique. His complexion now held just the hint of gold, while his eyes appeared a human aqua-blue. His flaming hair had become the color of molten amber, strewn through with golden sparks, especially when its waves were being tossed by the breeze, as they were just then.

  Awe dragged at Tanis’s steps. Surely Cephrael himself could not have possessed a grace more divine.

  Must you stare so, Tanis? Sinárr cast a mental nudge for Tanis to speed up again and close his mouth. You will flatter him too much.

  I didn’t know he could make his wings gold!

  Sinárr sighed morosely. Rafael is courting you now. It shall take me a hundred planets to recover from this.

  Tanis eyed him amusedly. Is that like saying the world is coming to an end, or more like you just need a stiff drink?

  Two hundred planets!

  Smothering his amusement, Tanis followed Sinárr off the bridge. He was inhaling to greet Rafael, when—

  Tanis? Pelas’s desperate summons sounded frighteningly weak.

  Tanis instinctively reached for his bond-brother to guide him into the frame of his starpoints.

  The world tilted violently beneath him.

  ***

  Ean grabbed onto Rafael’s arm as the terrace seemed to tilt precariously to the right. “What was that?”

  “That would be our young Tanis,” Rafael arched a brow in the shape of speculation, “and possibly also...”

  “Pelas.” Darshan launched forward in the very moment Pelas appeared on the terrace, knees buckling. Darshan caught him in his arms. Pelas’s face was pale, and his left arm and chest were soaked in blood. “By Chaos born,” Darshan hissed, “what have you let Shail do to you now?”

  A slow and wondering smile claimed Pelas’s features as he gazed up at his brother. “What are you doing in Shadow?”

  Tanis rushed over. “What happened?” He placed a hand on Pelas’s head in the Healer’s hold.

  “Let us lay him down.” Rafael made a stone table appear, and Darshan laid his brother upon it. They all circled around.

  Rafael lifted his wings to shade Pelas’s face from the sun. The latter looked up at him through eyes glazed with pain, but his smile revealed a deep affection. “Rafael.”

  Rafael shook his head. “You’re making an ill habit of this, Pelasommáyurek. If you so desire my attentions, you need only ask for them.”

  “It’s his hand.” Tanis looked worriedly to Ean. “There’s a pattern of some kind on it, but I can’t tell what it’s doing—”

  Ean took Pelas by the chin and captured his copper-eyed gaze with his own. “Let me in.” Then he dove into the immortal’s mind without waiting for his permission.

  He knew Pelas’s life pattern, for he’d tried once to unmake it and then subsequently tried to repair it when guilt—if not judgment—got the better of him. Pelas’s pattern was not as badly frayed as it had been in Tambarré, but havoc was wreaking its way through it quickly.

  Ean shook his head. Gods in the known...

  This is our brother at his most vindictive. Darshan’s anger thundered along his bond with Ean.

  “The pattern,” Tanis urged. The floor seemed to tilt dramatically.

  “Yes, I see it.” Ean found the pattern clinging parasitically to Pelas’s lifeforce, but at first, he had no idea what to make of it.

  I see what you’re seeing, Darshan sounded grave. This is not a pattern of Chaos, nor one I’m familiar with.

  It took Ean a moment of exploration to realize why none of them could make sense of it. “Its inverteré.” He gave a rough exhale, even as he began turning the pattern right-side in. “A pattern in negative. You have to return it first to its native positive before you can do anything about it.”

  Rafael conjured a goblet filled with silver liquid and lifted Pelas’s head to help him drink, which he did without protest. “You were foolish to risk framing Shadow in this condition, Pelasommáyurek,” Rafael said as he lowered Pelas’s head again. He sounded truly irritated with him.

  Pelas looked the Warlock over with half-lidded copper eyes, whereupon his lips spread in a knowing smile and he asked weakly, “Who are the golden wings for?”

  “Please don’t talk.” Tanis pressed gentle hands to Pelas’s head and lifted a fretful gaze to Ean. Hurry, please.

  Ean clenched his jaw. Shail’s pattern was actually a matrix of many inverteré patterns. Each had to be individually reversed and held in suspension until he could unwork them all together. To do otherwise would leave knots of intent still clinging to Pelas’s life pattern, and there was no telling what havoc that could create.

  Throughout this strenuous undertaking, Darshan’s watchful attention permeated Ean’s mind. It surprised the prince how much encouragement he drew from the connection, almost as if Björn himself had been overseeing his wielding.

  By the time Ean finally finished restoring the matrix to its natural shape, Tanis had become a frenzied ball of apprehension. Quickly then, Ean sought each pattern’s beginning and ending and promptly started all of them unraveling.

  As the last vestiges of the matrix expired, Pelas inhaled a shuddering breath and let it out again slowly, and the tension creasing his brow eased.

  Everyone let out a collective exhale. Even Sinárr seemed marginally relieved.

  Darshan laid a hand on Pelas’s arm. “Will you accept my Healing?” His dark eyes entreated Pelas with remarkable candor. “It will take both powers to restore you.”

  “Just do it, please.” Rafael waved impatiently at him. “Perhaps then Tanis will stop upending my floors.”

  Staring at his brother wordlessly, Pelas nodded. Then he rolled his head to look at Ean while Darshan commenced his Healing. Pelas let his gaze emphasize what his exhausted breath could not. Thank you.

  “You were lucky.” Ean hoped his tone effectively communicated just how lucky Pelas had been. “Anyone with a less substantial constitution would already be dead.”

  Tanis smoothed Pelas’s dark hair back from his face. “What was the pattern doing to him?”

  Killing him, Ean thought. Verily, it had reminded him of some of Dore Madden’s more vicious work. “You might’ve recognized it was a matrix?”

  Tanis nodded.

  “It bound a series of first-strand patterns to one purpose and then inverted and made them do the opposite. So instead of restoring his life pattern, they were destroying it.”

  “Appropriately diabolical.” Rafael gave a resigned sigh. “I do hope one of you will one day bring Shailabanáchtran to heel—at the very least for the sake of those of us who care for you.”

  Darshan cupped Pelas’s face with his hand. The two Malorin’athgul stared at each other for a long time this way. Ean couldn’t tell what was passing between them—Darshan did not invite Ean to share in that interchange—but the resonance of energy was palpable.

  Finally, Pelas shook his head around a marveling smile and slowly sat up. As the rest of them stepped back, he found his feet and took his brother’s face between his hands. His smile widened as he met Darshan’s gaze. “You have changed.”

  Releasing one hand, Pelas reached reassuringly for Tanis, to bring the lad into the circle of his affections. As Tanis moved closer to Pelas, Sinárr placed a hand on Tanis’s shoulder in a not-so-subtle claim of his own, while Tanis turned a warm look to E
an and extended his hand, and when Ean took it...

  Suddenly the five of them knew a profound connectivity.

  Power flared through mutual bindings which had established powerful channels of affinity between each of them. Deyjiin blossomed in enormous clouds, raw and unfocused, billowing with potential.

  Rafael let out a low whistle.

  And for the first time in countless, agonizing days, Ean saw a new path of consequence unfurling before him.

  The ground seemed to slam back down with jarring finality.

  “Tanis, my floors,” Rafael sighed.

  They all stepped abruptly away from each other and looked around, as startled by the moment of connection as by the sudden jolt.

  Ean still stood with waves of consequence reverberating around him...and among the bombarding waves, a specific prodding, as a finger thrust definitively into his chest.

  He knew exactly where they had to go.

  Tanis smoothed his hair back from his face, still looking sheepish. “I don’t entirely understand it. Rafael thinks I’m sensing the cosmic balance, but—”

  “I know what it means.” For the first time in a long time, Ean felt absolutely certain of his path. He met the others’ startled gazes with an auspicious smile. “It’s the Game calling us back.”

  They all considered him mutely.

  Then Pelas cleared his throat. “Right. About that...”

  “Let us begin with what happened to you, Pelasommáyurek.” Rafael riffled his golden wings aggressively as he resettled them into a cloak.

  Pelas began unfastening his bloodied coat and told them the while what he’d learned of Shail’s activities, and especially of his controversial pattern.

  “What is this pattern of our brother’s?” Darshan wanted to know.

  “I haven’t seen it. The Empress of Agasan has it under lock and key, but rest assured, those who Shail wants to have it most certainly do.” Pelas tossed his ruined coat onto the table and started unbuttoning his bloodied shirt. “I was hoping to find some trace of the pattern in Shail’s laboratory, some hint of what he might be doing with it, but if the pattern was there among the others, I couldn’t isolate it. That’s where I had a run-in with the matrix Ean just unworked.”

  “Where is this laboratory?” Ean asked.

  “It hides behind a false wall in Shail’s apartments at the Sormitáge.”

  Tanis caught his breath, and his eyes grew very wide.

  Pelas met his gaze with an equal unease darkening in his own. “Yes, you see it, too. Do you know how many gods I thanked that you made it out of that room unharmed?”

  Tanis was looking supremely apologetic.

  “But this injury is not what drove you here to us,” Darshan said, obviously knowing his brother’s mind.

  Pelas blew out his breath. “No.” He tossed his shirt onto the table and looked to Rafael.

  The Warlock regarded his bare-chested form appreciatively.

  Pelas grinned at him. “You really are shameless. Do you want to conjure some clothes for me?”

  “Not really.”

  And then, suddenly, Pelas stood in new clothes, looking immaculate as ever. He placed a hand on Tanis’s shoulder. “Thank you.”

  Tanis grinned. “Don’t mention it.”

  Pelas captured all of their gazes then. “I came to find you because Baelfeir has returned to Alorin.”

  Ean looked instantly to Rafael, who arched a brow of resigned inevitability.

  Darshan assumed a thoughtful frown. Tanis looked concerned, and Sinárr gave a rather indifferent sigh and remarked, “Alorin always was his favorite world.”

  The pattern of consequence had already revealed to Ean where next they needed to go. Now he understood why.

  “Perhaps we should be about this other matter then.” Rafael vanished his table and looked to Ean. “Time in Alorin, it appears, grows short.”

  Pelas looked around curiously at them all. “What other matter?”

  Tanis rubbed at one eye. “I think he means the binding.”

  Pelas cocked his head at him.

  “Unless you prefer to bind with me, Pelasommáyurek?” Rafael looked Pelas up and down with suggestion in his gaze. “I have not given up the idea of convincing you. Darshan and I even have a bet.”

  Darshan grunted. “You declared you would win my brother’s affections and I said when the winds of Chaos cease to blow. I fail to see how this is a wager.”

  Rafael turned to him in a flare of gilded wings. “It was very nearly a dare, Darshanvenkhátraman.”

  While the immortals continued this debate, Ean touched Tanis on the shoulder and asked low at his ear, “Tanis, may I have a word with you?”

  The lad obligingly moved away with him.

  Ean led Tanis to the terrace railing and leaned back against it, so that Tanis stood between him and the others. He took the lad by both shoulders and held his gaze firmly. “Tanis...I want you to let me do this thing.”

  It took a moment for Tanis to realize what Ean was asking. “You mean, you want to bind with Rafael?”

  “Yes. He’s agreed to it.” He looked the lad over, seeking any agitation in his thoughts. “Would you be disappointed?”

  “Gods, no!” The relief in his voice was palpable. “But why would you want—I mean, it’s nothing like...” Tanis shook his head, grimacing. “I just mean to say that binding with a Warlock is...different. My binding with Sinárr is nothing like my binding with Pelas.”

  Ean nodded to convey his understanding. “I have a feeling I might need Rafael’s help in the future, and if we’re bound, he can find his way into Alorin, to me, upon my summons. Isn’t that true?”

  “So Sinárr tells me.”

  Ean sat back on the railing and studied the lad. “Tanis...earlier, when we all stood connected—you recall that moment?” Tanis went a little round-eyed by way of confirming that he did. “When that sense of connection bloomed between us all, I saw a new pattern of consequence.”

  Wonder lit Tanis’s face. “You still see the patterns?”

  “I do—when Cephrael wills it.” Ean gripped the railing beneath him and gazed over at the three immortals, still marveling at his earlier decision to bind with Rafael and how perfectly it now aligned with the pattern of consequence he’d just seen.

  “Somehow, binding with Rafael plays a role in this pattern,” Ean remarked pensively. He struggled to see more of the unfurling design, to find Rafael’s role within it, but eventually he gave up and smiled faintly instead. “I can’t tell you exactly how, but it feels right. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Of course.” Tanis glanced over his shoulder towards the Warlock. “But I thought Rafael wanted to bind with me so he could have a closer connection to Pelas?”

  “He may still, but for now, he and I have a mutual interest to pursue.”

  The Warlock in question was just then saying something to Darshan that had the Malorin’athgul looking almost piqued.

  Tanis let out a slow exhale. “Do you know how to do the working?”

  Ean heaved himself off the railing and clapped a hand on Tanis’s shoulder, turning him as they walked to rejoin the others. “I have an idea, yes.”

  Rafael lifted his gaze to them as they neared.

  “I like your golden wings, sir,” Tanis complimented.

  “Yes...” Rafael looked the lad over with a meaningful smile, “I thought you might.”

  “Don’t preen, Rafael.” Pelas angled them both a grin. “You should see when he makes them blue, Tanis.”

  Rafael’s wings riffled indignantly. “They were not blue, Pelasommáyurek.”

  “Blue is in the eye of the beholder,” Pelas replied, winking.

  Rafael fixed a desirous gaze on Pelas in return. “In any case...I only made them blue for you.”

  Sinárr cleared his throat pointedly.

  “Can you make them any color, sir?” Tanis asked.

  “He could make himself into a beetle if the mood suited him.
” Darshan’s tone implied that Rafael might be improved by this form.

  Ean needed them to move things along. He looked to Rafael. “Shall we?”

  “Indeed, Ean. I do not even mind becoming connected to Darshanvenkhátraman via his binding to you.”

  “I’m not sure how I feel about it,” the Malorin’athgul groused. “Rafael has an over-inflated opinion of his skills.”

  A grinning Pelas clapped a hand on Darshan’s shoulder. “We repel those who mirror ourselves too closely, brother.”

  Ean needed Darshan’s help in order to access elae while in Shadow. He’d been prepared to argue his reasoning for the binding if necessary, but when he’d proposed his idea to Darshan, the latter had merely replied that if Ean thought it should be so, then they would make it so. It stunned Ean to recognize all of the ways that the Malorin’athgul was holding true to his word. Of late, when Ean thought of Darshan, gratitude choked him.

  He looked now to the Malorin’athgul, who would form the conduit for him to reach Alorin and elae, and the prince felt Darshan’s awareness open in his thoughts.

  He quickly reached through him for elae, and gave a mental sigh when he felt warmth flooding into his mind. The lifeforce was a hot, heady libation after subsisting on the air of deyjiin for so long.

  In an earlier conversation, Tanis had described his method of binding with Sinárr, but Ean had a different sort of binding in mind. He looked to Rafael. “Would you do the honor of producing a dagger for us?”

  Rafael regarded him curiously, but he made a jeweled blade appear and handed it to Ean.

  The prince drew the razor tip hard along his palm and was rewarded with a stripe of blood. The pain certainly felt real enough. He spun the weapon in his hand and extended the hilt back to Rafael.

  Who took it with skeptical amusement. “You realize there is no actual blood,” the Warlock said as he was cutting his own palm.

  “It’s symbolic, I know.” Ean watched the blood welling in the cut on his palm. “What’s important is the intent behind the symbolism. ‘KNOW the effect you intend to create.’ We intend to create a connection by combining our lifeforces.”