The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  Whereupon understanding sank like a stone in Ean’s heart. “Your purpose remains unclear.” It was a startling blow. He studied Darshan’s face, seeking any hint that he was wrong. “You don’t know whether you’re bound to our cause, like Pelas, or...”

  Darshan regarded him gravely. “My thoughts are never far from Chaos, Ean.”

  “But that doesn’t mean...” Ean struggled to make sense of it himself. “What does it mean?”

  Darshan arched resigned brows. “This is precisely the question I must answer.”

  Ean worked the muscles of his jaw as he thought this over. He couldn’t see Darshan anywhere on the path of consequence—Malorin’athgul wove no threads through the tapestry; instead, they bent everyone else’s path to conform to their desires—but he knew in his heart that Darshan had a place in the pattern, that he was important to its outcome.

  Yet...if Darshan didn’t know what he desired...then...then he didn’t know the effect he intended to create, and bringing him to T’khendar in that state of mind, with the realm’s fabric as fragile as it was...

  Ean realized that Darshan was right to refuse. He exhaled a slow breath. “When will I see you again?”

  Darshan almost cracked a smile. “Be careful, Ean. You’ll have me thinking you actually desire my company.”

  Ean gave him a lopsided grin. “Well, I mean...once you get past the cold-eyed countenance that strikes terror into the hearts of every living creature, you know...” he winked at him, “there’s a soft spot in there somewhere.”

  I trust you will keep that knowledge between us. Darshan raised a hand and summoned another portal. “Farewell, Prince of Dannym.”

  “Will you—” But Ean didn’t know how to put his desire into words.

  As it turned out, he didn’t have to.

  I will always be receptive to your call. What he didn’t say, but what Ean gleaned from Darshan’s shadowed tone, was his suspicion that in the future, Ean might not always be receptive to his.

  Then Darshan stepped through his portal and vanished without looking back.

  ***

  As it happened, the collection of peaked, coppery tents had just appeared in the distance when Ean rejoined Tanis and Pelas and rapidly whisked them all across the node into T’khendar.

  They emerged through a black stone archway at the top of a long staircase. The latter cascaded down the mountainside through tiered gardens until it opened upon a palace with white stone walls and nacre domes glinting sharply in the sunlight.

  Beyond the parkland surrounding the palace, a white city spread, glossing the mountainside with dark slate rooftops and shining spires. The long rays of late afternoon were gilding the city, making the entirety of it seem somehow alive.

  Everywhere Tanis looked he saw bridges and parks, turrets, domes or towers with pennons flying on the wind. He could’ve stared for hours had not everything felt so horribly awry.

  In front of him, Ean stood stiff. “Something’s wrong.” He turned a look over his shoulder to find Tanis staring wordlessly back at him. “I sensed it at the sa’reyth but now...”

  The lad still couldn’t put a name to the ill feeling he was perceiving. He only knew a sudden dry-mouthed panic surrounding it.

  “What is it, Ean?” Pelas obviously saw nothing visually amiss.

  Ean’s gaze widened in the same moment that his thoughts went cold, in the same moment Tanis realized what was wrong.

  “Isabel.” Ean bolted off down the steps on a tide of the fifth, shouting follow me! back at them on the fourth.

  Pelas enveloped Tanis in a shield of his own power, and they took off together, rushing close behind.

  In the same moment Ean had fingered the problem, Tanis realized why he felt so namelessly awry: it was the absence of his mother’s binding.

  Though he hadn’t known it for what it was until learning of his parents, Tanis had always felt the binding between them. He hadn’t noticed its absence while in Shadow, because elae didn’t flow there in the same way, but arriving back in the Realms of Light, he perceived it as a cavernous hole in his consciousness.

  Worse was the churning river of fears that tumbled in to fill that empty space. What could’ve happened for his mother to vanish so completely from his thoughts? His mind revolted at the very idea of it.

  Reaching the palace, Ean sent the fifth into a pair of tall ebony doors and stormed through the parting, sprinting headlong down the corridor beyond.

  He led a chase through that alabaster palace, the overwhelming beauty of which Tanis barely recalled, due to the ill apprehension pounding his heart. Afterwards, he couldn’t even remember if they’d passed another living soul, his thoughts had been so consumed by concern for his mother.

  But when Ean crashed through another pair of massive doors and into an impossible hallway...this view was startling enough to demand a coin of attention as payment for Tanis’s passing.

  Ean ran down the seemingly endless corridor of doors until he reached the one he needed—though how he discerned the correct one from all the others, Tanis couldn’t say. The prince pulled it open and rushed through. Following on Ean’s heels into darkness, Tanis perceived a pattern flashing just before he emerged in a storm.

  Sand blasted him from every angle. The wind howled against the night.

  Ean and Pelas simultaneously embraced the fifth again—Tanis perceived it through both of his bonds—and then the world went silent. Tanis joined the others in spitting sand from their mouths and blinking it from tearing eyes.

  Beyond their shields, the storm raged in a constant, susurrant howling of wind and intermittent snapping of heavy canvas. Ghostly globes glowed in the distance, seemingly veiled in sackcloth, sketching a dim path amid the darker shadows of tents.

  Pelas studied the storm through the filter of his own innate composition, which, being privy to his mind, was giving Tanis a terrible sense of vertigo.

  “This is no natural storm.” Pelas looked immediately to Ean. “What’s happening here?”

  Oblivion darkened the prince’s gaze. “Your brother Rinokh is trying to unmake the world.” He set off for the closest globe, not realizing how deeply this truth had pierced Pelas.

  But Tanis felt it. He placed a consoling hand on his bond-brother’s arm.

  Pelas turned him a soft look of gratitude, and together they moved to follow Ean.

  They were just passing between two tents when a man emerged out of the shadows of the storm, staggering unevenly in the lashing wind. He had one hand on a guide rope while his other pinned a scarf across his nose and mouth. He was angling his body against the wind as he forged his way towards them.

  As soon as he gained the safety of Ean’s shield, the man dropped his scarf to reveal a countenance Tanis recognized with surprise.

  “Franco,” Ean grabbed the Espial’s arm. “Where is she? What happened?”

  “Ean.” Franco Rohre nodded soberly to him. “I’m sorry to welcome you back under these circumstances.” His brown eyes took in Tanis and then Pelas, whereupon they widened considerably. “Immanuel?”

  “Franco,” Pelas nodded a rather mysterious greeting. Tanis gave him a look.

  Ean clutched the Espial’s arm, dragging Franco’s attention back from Pelas. “Franco, I beg you, take us to Isabel.”

  “Yes, of course, Ean. I was...” his gaze strayed again to Pelas. Then he gave the prince a wan smile, brief and apologetic, murmured, “She’s this way,” and led back the way he’d just come.

  “The First Lord is with her now,” Franco offered as they were trudging through the ankle-deep sand. “He sent me to find you as soon as he perceived your arrival.”

  “What happened?”

  “We honestly don’t know. She was on the grid and she lost consciousness somehow. Thankfully the harness retrieved her off the Pattern.”

  “Harness?” Pelas asked.

  Franco glanced to him, his gaze still wondering at his presence there. “The harnesses are a failsafe when wor
king on the world grid. We lose consciousness often. The harnesses retrieve us from the Pattern before we can find harm upon it.”

  Ean shook his head, looking bewildered. “Why was Isabel on the grid—why were any of you? Where are the drachwyr?”

  Franco winced and loosened his scarf around his neck. “We don’t know exactly when the drachwyr are at present.”

  Pelas blinked. “Pardon me, did you say when the drachwyr are?”

  Franco gave him a grave look. “All save the Lady Mithaiya were cast forward in time. It was a complex working fashioned especially to cling to their immortal essence. The First Lord found the working on Alorin’s currents. That’s as much as any of us know about it.”

  “Thirteen hells,” Ean swore under his breath. “When did Björn have time to go to Alorin to study the currents?”

  “When Lord Ramu failed to return from Raku.”

  Ean rubbed his forehead, obviously trying to make sense of this news. After a moment, he blew out his breath as if there just was no processing it.

  “In the drachwyr’s absence, we’re doing what we can to shore up the grid, but it takes us days to accomplish what they could do in hours. The First Lord has spent much time on the world’s pattern—too much.” Franco clenched his jaw. “The drachwyr are desperately missed.”

  Ean shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense, Franco. Even working on the grid as you describe shouldn’t have weakened Isabel like that.”

  Franco cast Ean a troubled glance, which the latter missed but which Tanis read clearly enough. The lad exchanged a concerned look with Pelas.

  Yes. Misgiving filled Pelas’s copper eyes. Things are deeply wrong here.

  After trekking through a maze of shadowed tents, Franco turned off the globe-lit path towards the largest tent they’d encountered thus far. He pulled aside the flaps to let Ean and the others enter first.

  As Tanis followed Ean inside, he felt something...it wasn’t exactly like walking through a wall of water, but a cooling sense washed over him from head to toe. He looked down at himself and realized all of the sand had been cleansed from his person. Even his ears felt cleared of abrasive grains.

  Inside an elegantly appointed chamber, four men waited in an eddy of impatience. One rose upon their entrance.

  Ean moved immediately to him. “Dagmar—” a desperate urgency threaded Ean’s tone. He extended his hand to clasp wrists with the Vestal. “Epiphany protect me, I can’t even sense her!”

  Tanis had never met the Second Vestal, but he appeared as powerfully built as the stories described. A gold circlet bound Dagmar’s shoulder-length blond hair, and like the zanthyr, he wore head-to-toe black. The second strand veritably pooled about him like a node.

  Dagmar took Ean by both shoulders. Pale green eyes looked the prince over. “Ean, welcome back. I admit, I expected you sooner.” He gave the prince no time to respond to this rather cryptic statement, but said as he released him, “Björn is with her. You well know she could have no better attendant to her welfare.” His steady manner offered strong reassurance, yet Tanis perceived a vein of unease within in the Vestal’s thoughts.

  Dagmar looked to Tanis next, saying, “And who have we—” but the moment he laid eyes on the lad, his gaze widened beneath a dawning recognition. He darted a potent stare back at Ean. “Now I understand your delay.”

  To Tanis, then, the Vestal extended his hand. The lad took it, somewhat in awe. “Well met, Tanis, heir of Adonnai.” Dagmar’s grip was powerful, but his gaze conveyed surprising warmth. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for a very long time.”

  Tanis murmured, “Thank you, sir.”

  “Would that we’d met under better conditions, but such is the nature of this stage of the game. Nothing comes easy.” Dagmar released Tanis’s hand and shifted his pale green eyes to Pelas, yet there was nothing pale about the force of his redirected attention. “And that must mean you’re—”

  “Pelasommáyurek,” his bond-brother murmured, giving Dagmar a slight bow. His manner was as polished as ever, but Tanis felt tension straining the fabric of his thoughts.

  “Ender of Paths,” Dagmar translated Pelas’s name with a look between the both of them, obviously noting their binding, “...or Maker of New Ones?”

  Tanis moved closer to Pelas—for his own reassurance as much as in support of his bond-brother. Their mutual foreboding over what was happening there was reaching monumental proportions. The lad asked the Vestal, “What can you tell us of my mother, sir?”

  “Not much yet, sadly. Your uncle will update us when he can.” Dagmar pushed hands in his pockets, rocked back on his heels and looked around the room. “We might as well all get acquainted while we wait. You’ll have reason to know each other soon enough.”

  He turned his attention to the three men who were crammed in, all elbows and knees, close beside each other on a low couch, despite the fact that there were plenty of other seats available in the carpeted room.

  Noting Dagmar’s attention, the tallest of the three nudged the man beside him, who looked up and then did the same to the third, whereupon they all hastened to their feet.

  The first and tallest man was dark-haired and had a serious air about him. The man beside him was fair and golden-haired, with one of those perfect noses artists so liked to draw, and the third sported an unruly cap of auburn curls teasing at a poet’s soft eyes. They were all bearded, and worry equally creased their blue eyes—in which identical shape and coloration Tanis noted a familial resemblance.

  Dagmar extended a hand towards them. “May I present the Paladin Knights, Gadovan, Mathias and Jude of the realm of Eltanin.”

  The three men, who in their dusty desert garb looked a far cry from what Tanis had imagined of the famous Paladin Knights, held fists at their sides and gave formal half-bows of greeting.

  “Boys, may I introduce to you Prince Ean val Lorian, husband to the Lady Isabel; Tanis, her beloved son, and...” Dagmar hitched a droll half-smile at Ean, “yours, I suppose; and Pelasommáyurek, Ender of Paths, bond-brother to Tanis and coincidentally, whose natural brother is right now gnawing on T’khendar’s magnetic grid like a particularly stringy hunk of hindquarter.”

  Upon this last pronouncement—or possibly in response to the entirety of it—the knights stared at them, nonplussed.

  Tanis couldn’t fault them for not knowing what to make of all that. He could only imagine what he looked like, still wearing the same clothes he’d been in when he’d left Pelas’s mansion in Hallovia—gods above, how long ago was that now?

  It suddenly occurred to him that he’d probably been wearing the same underclothes much longer than any decent person should, despite the timelessness of Shadow. And Pelas...the sleeve of his actual coat was still covered in dried blood.

  “Paladin Knights,” Ean meanwhile shifted a wary gaze between the men and Dagmar, “in alliance with us?” He was resonating a new chord of apprehension.

  Dagmar motioned the men to sit, and they reassumed their cramped position on the couch. He looked to the prince then. “The Eltanese are Nodefinders skilled in the kind of unusual work we need done here, Ean. Sent by the First Lord’s contact in Illume Belliel in answer to Björn’s fairly desperate call for aid.”

  Dagmar settled his warrior’s body down on a chair clearly intended for a much smaller frame. “I imagine Franco told you what happened to the drachwyr.”

  “As much as he knew.” Ean pressed palms to his eyes and then pushed them roughly back through his hair. “Do you really know nothing of her condition?”

  “I know she’s alive—thanks to these three,” and he jerked his head toward the knights.

  Everyone looked at them again.

  The dark-haired Gadovan glanced up beneath his brows, noted everyone now staring at him, and nudged the blond and curly-haired Mathias beside him.

  Mathias roused from his thoughts to find Gadovan looking pointedly at him, whereupon he noted the rest of the room also watching, and reddened
slightly. He sat up straighter and nudged Jude, who looked around and said, “Your pardon, what was the question?”

  Gadovan murmured, “The Vestal wants us to tell them what happened on the grid with the Lady Isabel, Jude.”

  Jude exchanged a look with Mathias. The two men could not have managed expressions of greater remorse if the emotion had been carved into their faces.

  Jude winced. “It’s...well, the Lady Isabel...she was...”

  “She was in the aether.” Gadovan had elbows braced on his knees, hands clasped between them, and deep lines furrowing his brow. “The harness should have pulled her to safety when she lost consciousness, and did in fact do so, once we got her back on the pattern, but when she fell—”

  Ean took an alarmed step towards them. “She fell off the world grid?”

  Gadovan’s gaze tightened. “She was between ley lines at the time. That’s when she lost consciousness.”

  Ean spun a wide-eyed look of outrage at Dagmar.

  “Mathias caught her.” Dagmar indicated the blond Nodefinder.

  “If you can call nearly falling on top of—” Jude caught his tongue beneath the severe look Gadovan was spearing at him.

  Ean ran a heated gaze across all of the assembled Nodefinders, including Dagmar and Franco. “Surely Isabel wasn’t on the grid without an anchor.”

  Gadovan straightened to meet the challenge in Ean’s stare. “It failed her, sir.”

  Tanis caught his breath. Indeed, everyone in that room seemed braced against this truth. They all knew precisely what it meant—even Pelas, by the end, for he easily gleaned understanding out of the current of trepidation coursing through Tanis’s thoughts.

  Tanis had never traversed a world grid the way these others had, but he had his mother’s training in the second strand, and he’d witnessed his father’s violent battle with Shail on Alorin’s Pattern of the World.

  Even while being unmade, Arion had maintained his anchor in Calgaryn. That his mother had lost hers...

  And then, suddenly, she was simply present in Tanis’s mind again.

  He spun a look at Ean, who equally must’ve felt her vibrantly anew, for he closed his grey eyes and exhaled a forceful breath of relief. “She’s back.”