The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  “What pirate?” Consuevé meanwhile demanded of the august man, who had to have been the Tivaricum’s Lord Commander.

  “The pirate Carian vran Lea,” the Lord Commander growled. “He tricked us across a node into this place in pursuit of him.”

  “Vran Lea is here?” Consuevé swung a glare at D’Varre, who gave a bug-eyed wheeze of dismay.

  “Find and arrest the pirate,” the Lord Commander ordered his men.

  “Belay that!” Consuevé shouted. “You have no jurisdiction here. That pirate’s arse belongs to me!”

  They all started arguing about who had more right to the pirate’s arse.

  Fynn poured another glass of wine.

  His inner clock, which could be uncannily accurate, especially if wine played a role at the end of its countdown, was chiming the five-minute mark when a voice rose above the general discord, “My arse ain’t no man’s for the claiming, poppets.”

  Fynn looked to his right to find the pirate standing atop D’Varre’s overly large desk.

  “Seize him!” shouted the Lord Commander.

  “Take him!” screamed Consuevé.

  “I wouldn’t move an inch if I were any of you.” Carian’s words of warning stilled even D’Varre’s men mid-stride.

  Somehow the pirate had found the time to roll himself a smoke. He took a long drag upon it. “See,” he exhaled a blue cloud towards Consuevé, “I’ve got this room so webbed with leis that if you take one wrong step, you could find yourselves anywhere from Addras to Agasan. Only thing needed to activate the leis is me, my mateys, and what do you know? Here I am!” He opened his arms to the room at large.

  The Tivaricum soldiers all exchanged looks with each other. They seemed inclined to believe him, perhaps because they’d just been instantaneously transported out of their own fortress into Rethynnea, hundreds of miles away.

  “You blokes don’t want to be moving around now,” Carian continued, “what with the leis all being active—that is, unless you’re looking to show up uninvited on an Avataren slaver,” and he flashed a saucy grin at this.

  None of them relished the idea, apparently.

  Carian fixed his dancing gaze on Consuevé. “You must be Demetrio.” He blew smoke lazily at him. “The Admiral told me all about you, though he failed to mention what a fancy Nancy you are. Has D’Varre here been showing you a new way to kiss the gunner’s daughter? He’s got a thing for pricks, but I’m guessing you knew that already.”

  The fact that Consuevé, a Nodefinder himself, made no move to strangle Carian in that moment convinced Fynn that the pirate wasn’t bluffing about the webwork of leis.

  “I’ll be right behind you, vran Lea,” Consuevé hissed.

  “Oh, I doubt that. You’ve got your work cut out for you today, mate, what with transporting the Lord Commander and his men back to Tregarion—that’s assuming you can figure how to walk out of this room without ending up in Addras. But hey, I hear the Vestian Sorceresy loves uninvited guests.” He took another drag on his smoke.

  Consuevé’s stare was black. “This isn’t over.”

  “If you invested as much time in your craft as you obviously do in that moustache of yours, you’d know how to web the leis yourself, mate.” Carian took another drag off his smoke while all of the men stood fuming. “And if D’Varre there could see past his own stomach, maybe he’d have noticed that someone webbed his office. Then again, that would take marginal skill in our craft, and D’Varre has shown that the only thing he’s skilled at is increasing his waistline.”

  D’Varre clucked indignantly.

  Carian propped his smoke between his lips and extended a hand to Fynn. “Show a leg, Fynnlar. We’re weighing anchor out of here.”

  Fynn accepted his hand, and the pirate hauled him atop the desk. He cast one last grin around the room. “You Nancies have fun licking each other’s wounds now.” Then he clapped a hand on Fynnlar’s shoulder and hauled him onto the Pattern of the World.

  A harrowing few arse-hair-raising minutes later, Fynn felt a nudge at his shoulder and stepped out of the Pattern’s no-man’s nothingness into the grassy meadow overlooking the First Lord’s sa’reyth.

  Devangshu and Kardashian were waiting there. The Bemothi looked haggard and the red-headed thief rather peevish. Both had seen rough handling, if told from their cuts and bruises and the ragged state of their remaining clothes.

  Fynn instantly rounded on them. “Really inconvenient of the pair of you to get yourselves caught by the likes of Demetrio Consuevé! The man’s a shipwreck waiting to happen.”

  “A pleasure to see you too, Fynnlar,” Devangshu groused. He turned a concerned look to Carian. “Are they in pursuit? Should we sound the alarm?”

  “Not today.” Carian ambled off towards the adjacent valley where the Nodefinder’s Rebellion made their headquarters. “But he’s looking, and he’ll find us eventually. You’d better be ready.”

  “Shouldn’t that be a we?” Kardashian fell into step on Carian’s left. “What will you be doing?”

  Carian eyed him sidelong. “As soon as I help you pitiful blokes set some things to rights, I’m off to find Rohre. He’s the best hope we’ve got.”

  “You can say that again,” Devangshu muttered, hobbling beside them.

  “He’s the best—”

  “Don’t say it again,” Devangshu hissed.

  The pirate grinned at him.

  Fynn was salivating for a punch-bowl sized goblet of Balaji’s wine, but he did manage to corral his attention enough to clarify, “What was all that about a webwork of leis, vran Lea? When’d you find time to do that?”

  “While Kardashian and Vita were stealing the Vestal Codex.”

  Devangshu grunted. “I wondered where you’d gotten off to.”

  “And aren’t you grateful now that I took precautions?” Carian hitched up his britches and glanced to him. “Was Kellar speaking true? Have we lost as many nodes back to Consuevé’s goons as we’d gained?”

  “Almost,” Devangshu admitted.

  Kardashian said, “It ain’t been a dream out here while you were taking your ease at Cassius’s estate.”

  “Ease. Ease?” Fynn protested. “Do you know the hell we’ve been put through? The man’s wine has bubbles!”

  Devangshu turned his bruised and swollen face to Fynn, looking incensed for some inexplicable reason.

  “I hope you know I’m charging double for the effort,” Fynn told him, “and triple for the overtime.”

  “Overtime?” Devangshu sputtered.

  Fynn turned him a righteous scowl. “The next time you need breaking out of gaol, make sure it’s on a Tuesday.”

  Twenty-four

  “The world is full of possibility

  patiently awaiting our notice.”

  –The Adept wielder Arion Tavestra

  Let’s meet on the mountain.

  Tanis woke with this thought lingering in the forefront of his mind like a servant loitering about, waiting to deliver a message to his master. It carried the unmistakable impression of his uncle’s wry smile.

  Tanis rolled over in bed to find Pelas standing in front of the mirror in the dressing area separating their adjoining bedrooms, his expression intensely focused as he positioned his shirt sleeve properly within the flared cuff of his coat. He’d washed his hair and woven it into the urbane queue he preferred, and he looked fine enough for any court.

  “Is that a new jacket?” Tanis asked sleepily. He puffed up his pillow to better support his head while he watched his bond-brother fiddling with his sleeves.

  “Found it in my rooms this morning.” His copper eyes imperceptibly tightened. “Your uncle is not a man to be reckoned with lightly. This coat is expertly made.”

  “Made like tailored, or made like conjured?”

  “I suspect the former but wouldn’t discount the latter. A man who can craft a world solidly out of the aether could probably fashion the elements into a coat without much effort.”

&nbs
p; “Good point.” Tanis threw back the sheet and started hunting around for his clothing, but the things he’d taken off the night before seemed to have vanished, which as he thought on it, was probably to everyone’s benefit. He found new clothes hanging in the armoire.

  Pelas settled into a chair in the corner while Tanis dressed. “It really is incredible, what your uncle has done here.”

  “I think he had some help.” Tanis had his new tunic stuck halfway over his head while his fingers fumbled blindly to undo the buttons he’d failed to undo to begin with.

  “Nine men, nine hundred men—that he accomplished it at all is astonishing.” Pelas drummed his fingers idly on the arm of his chair, but Tanis could tell he remained deeply disturbed by something. “And all to stop us.”

  Well, there it was. Tanis finally got his head through his tunic. He eyed Pelas quietly while slowly pushing his arms into his sleeves. “Seems the right magnitude of effort, considering.”

  Pelas cast him a voluminous look. “Your uncle built this world to plug the tear in Alorin’s aether, and now this world has fallen beneath the same peril. They cannot make yet another realm to plug T’khendar’s tear.”

  Tanis reached for his pants. “That does seem doubtful.”

  “So how will they repair it?”

  “You tell me. You’re the one who’s been studying the tear since we arrived.”

  Pelas eyed him cryptically. Then a half-smile teased one corner of his mouth. “I forget sometimes how deeply you permeate my thoughts.”

  “I would that you remembered more often.” Tanis caught up the tails of his shirt beneath his chin so he could button his pants. “Sometimes I feel like I’ll never find my way back from the fringes where your mind likes to linger.”

  Pelas grew serious upon these words. “You dislike it there?”

  Tanis lifted his chin, dropping his shirt and grinning in the same moment. “It’s just a bit disconcerting.”

  “In what way?”

  “You know...” Tanis looked around for a belt, “you’ll sort of hang upside down on the fringes of elemental consciousness, listening to the song of the stars and being buffeted by varying forces of gravitation—kind of like floating head down beneath the waves of a galactic sea.” Tanis found his belt and wrapped it around his hips. He grinned up under his brows. “Like I said, disconcerting.”

  Pelas chuckled. “Well, when you put it that way...”

  “How would you put it?”

  “No,” he smiled admiringly at Tanis, “your description is apt.” Pelas kept studying him while his thoughts orbited several different stars.

  Tanis sat down on a padded bench to put on his boots. “So how do we repair the tear?”

  “I wish I knew.” Pelas blew out his breath. “All of this is mine and my brothers’ doing—T’khendar’s tear, this storm, Alorin being out of Balance...”

  “I concede the storm and the tear, but the Balance part of it...” Tanis glanced to him. “That wasn’t you.”

  Pelas frowned at this. “What do you mean?”

  “Just a theory I’ve been formulating.” Tanis pushed to his feet. “Ready?”

  Pelas eyed him narrowly as he also stood. “Theory, eh? How have you hidden such a theory from my notice?”

  Tanis grabbed an aqua coat from the armoire, the cut of which was similar to Pelas’s own, and headed out of his room. “You’ve been rather occupied with patterns of shame and regret lately.”

  Pelas frowned as he followed him. “I fear you’re making too light of this, Tanis.”

  Tanis aimed a look over his shoulder. “I’m not making light of it. I’m just following my mother’s instruction and accepting that what’s done is done.”

  Pelas growled a foreign curse under his breath, but the translation in his thoughts felt electric. He moved in line with Tanis as they walked towards the front of the tent and said, low and fierce, “Tanis, I see what my patterns are doing to her.”

  “You don’t have to be a Malorin’athgul to see that.”

  Pelas grabbed Tanis’s arm to stop him. “Tanis...” He pressed his lips together tightly and stared off, working the muscles of his jaw. “How can you see what I did to your mother and still walk beside me?”

  “Because I’m not looking at the past, as you are.”

  Pelas’s gaze flew sternly back to his. “I see a future I cannot bear.”

  Tanis took him by the shoulders. “No, you’re looking at the past and thinking it’s the future—you think I don’t see your punishing thoughts? Replaying those hours with my mother over and over again? Thank you for that, by the way.” He angled him a chastising scowl and started off again towards the front of the tent.

  “Tanis—”

  “Pelas, those patterns of yours have purpose. I can see that—anyone who knows the least bit about Patterning can see that.”

  “Yes, and they’re killing her!” Pelas growled heatedly from behind him. Tanis thanked the stars that Pelas had such self-control. All the fury he felt towards himself...had he not held his power so tightly in check, the force of that anger would’ve blasted a crater in the face of the realm.

  Tanis angled a look over his shoulder more gently. “But killing my mother is not what you created those patterns to do.”

  Pelas pressed both palms to his temples as he strode behind him. “I don’t know what I created them to do! They just came to me! I didn’t even have my power at the time.”

  “Yes, you did.” Tanis stopped before the exterior tent flaps and turned to face him. “You just thought you didn’t.”

  Beyond those overlapping folds of canvas, the sandstorm howled and tore at the tent, but that raging wind was a gentle breeze compared to the storm of Pelas’s self-reproach.

  Tanis placed a hand on his bond-brother’s chest, the same hand that bore the scar of their eternal binding. “I know you.” He met Pelas’s gaze and demanded his bond-brother hold his in return. “I know your intent. Subject to Darshan’s compulsion or not, you didn’t intend for those patterns to harm my mother. I know that—she knows that. I see this truth in your memories, and she lived it. You can’t hide it from us.”

  Pelas studied him deeply. “Then what is the truth, Tanis? Because by the Void, I cannot see it.”

  “Whatever those patterns are meant to do, killing my mother isn’t part of it.”

  “Yet they are.” Contrition and regret made coals of his copper eyes.

  “Maybe. Probably.” Tanis exhaled a slow breath. “But what else are they doing?” He tugged on the placard of Pelas’s coat. “Come on. I need your shield so we’re not covered in sand by the time we get there.”

  Pelas dutifully enveloped them in the fifth and followed Tanis out into the storm, still frowning deeply.

  “My uncle and Prince Ean will do everything in their power to save my mother from those patterns.” Tanis aimed a sidelong look at his bond-brother. “But my mother has impressed upon me that equally important—perhaps even more important—is understanding them.”

  Pelas grunted in begrudging agreement. “I’ve studied them in my mind since the moment of their inception, yet I cannot tell what they’re doing. They’re native to me. I ought to be able to discern their intent.”

  “My mother says that all we can do right now is decide that they are understandable, that they can be solved, and eventually the answer will present itself.”

  Pelas made a sound that was half dubious and half droll. “So what law applies here?”

  Tanis turned to him in surprise, to which Pelas remarked, “Even I know that your mother eats, lives and breathes the Laws and Esoterics.”

  Tanis grinned. “It’s the Fourth Law: Positive determinism is necessary to achieve the intended effect.”

  Pelas grunted. Then we shall be a force for positivity.

  After that, they trudged through the flying sand within Pelas’s protective sphere, not speaking, unless Tanis counted the turbulent thoughts revolving through Pelas’s head.


  Just as they reached the black stone portal, which Tanis somehow knew would take them to his uncle’s mountain, Pelas put a hand on his shoulder. Tanis turned to meet his gaze.

  “Tanis, do you really not desire to punish me for what I’ve done?”

  “I think you’re punishing yourself enough for both of us.”

  “But Isabel is your mother.”

  “Yes. And you’re my brother.” It was his mother who had impressed this very point upon him.

  The Unbreakable Bond meant unity, and Tanis had come to realize that an eternal concept of unity meant he had to claim Pelas’s choices as if they’d been his own, whether or not he even understood them.

  He laid a hand on Pelas’s arm. “Look...all families have their challenges, right?” Then he winked at him and stepped through the portal to go meet his uncle.

  They emerged into glaringly clear skies atop a ridge of volcanic rock. All around them spread endless desert. To Tanis’s near left, the obsidian columns of a grand pavilion gleamed darkly, while to his right...

  “By Chaos born.” Pelas was staring at the storm that had overtaken the entire southern horizon, spanning countless miles.

  Crimson clouds pulsed with lightning beneath a fractured sky, while the air below was nearly black with a churning storm of sand and ash. They’d been walking through all of that?

  Pelas stared at the storm with a deep furrow narrowing his brows. Tanis placed a hand on his shoulder. He was as deeply affected by what he saw as Pelas was.

  And staring at the fissured patchwork of broken sky, Tanis realized...if not for his uncle, his mother and father, and those few men bold enough to stand with them, it would be Alorin being unmade right at that moment—and no one would have the least idea what to do about it.

  He felt sick merely thinking it.

  This is the product of our existence. Pelas stood beside him, radiating conflict. If this is who we are, my brothers and I...if this is all that we are...

  You decide who you are. “Come on.” He tugged on his arm. “You’ve endured enough disillusionment for one day, I think.”