The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  Five hundred Dannish soldiers routed the Saldarians in a matter of minutes.

  The fortress was theirs.

  ***

  Down in the valley, Lazar hal’Hamaadi sensed the shifting tide of battle, as any well-seasoned commander could. It came when he scanned his gaze across the camp and was rewarded with the surety that more of his men remained standing than the enemy’s.

  He lifted his gaze to the fortress and saw the barricade down and a long trail of men streaming through the gates. It that moment, he knew they’d won.

  ***

  Tannour felt new currents coursing through the room as he studied the wielder named Dore Madden through a lens of Air. He could feel whispers of the wielder’s intent like spears, alarmingly sharp and decidedly lethal.

  The warlord’s laughter rang through the chamber. “You can’t compel me anymore, Dore Madden!” He was practically dancing with glee.

  Patterns shifted and spun like leaves in a windstorm. Whenever they reached a tendril to taste of Tannour, he sent Air to diffuse and confuse them, such that he was constantly mentally batting at flies.

  He knew the wielder was testing him, seeking his weaknesses, trying to learn his strengths. Tannour focused on finding the black thread of connection that the wielder had on Trell, which he was using to bind Trell to immobility. Finally finding it, he severed it with a thought.

  Trell expelled his breath in relief behind him.

  An instant before the warlord leaped at the A’dal.

  A second before the wielder threw a pattern at Tannour.

  A heartbeat before Tannour rushed the wielder. He caught Dore Madden’s pattern with a hook of air and flung it back at him while crossing the distance between them in a whisper of breath.

  Madden drew a Merdanti dagger and deflected the swirling power aside. Then Tannour was upon him, brandishing two crescent-shaped blades, aiming for his throat.

  Madden dodged between his slicing blades—fethe, but he moved fast for a corpse!—and struck for Tannour’s midriff. Tannour sidestepped and slashed again, right and left in deadly arcs. The wielder threw up a shield of some sort, and Tannour’s blades drew sparks as they scraped across it.

  Madden spoke something in Agasi, spitting the words as he slashed at Tannour. A vortex of malice swarmed down from the ceiling. Tannour stepped to his left, letting the deadly energy whorl harmlessly past, eliciting a snarl from Madden.

  Behind him, Trell was battling the warlord, tracing a rhythmic dance of blades across the polished floor.

  “What manner of Adept are you?” Madden hissed. He dodged out of Tannour’s reach and slung a potent cocktail of death at him—half a dozen patterns fulminating in combination.

  Tannour communed, heart racing. The vortex slammed into the column behind him, and the stones began crumbling into ash.

  He materialized again beside the wielder, already striking for his throat. Madden must’ve anticipated him, though, because his blade stuck in midair. Tannour couldn’t dislodge the weapon from whatever force was holding it. Air told him nothing.

  He released the blade to duck Madden’s swiping dagger, tossed his other blade from left to right and slashed for the wielder in return. The razor edge struck against Madden’s shield in another cascade of sparks, whereupon the latter danced out of Tannour’s reach.

  Separated now by several paces, Tannour stalked the wielder while the wielder stalked him. Air told him Madden walked with a hunched gait as they circled one another. Fethe, but the very air revolted at touching the man. Tannour was having difficulty reading the vibrations, they were so tumultuous. And the toxic patterns kept darting at him relentlessly, requiring constant concentration to fend them off.

  Even with his eyes bound beneath black silk, Tannour could feel Dore Madden’s death’s-face stare aimed at him. “Airwalker,” the man finally said through a decidedly sinister sneer. “But which path is yours?”

  Elsewhere in the chamber, the warlord was clattering a constant stream of invective as he battled Trell.

  “Mor’alir?” Madden asked himself. “Nay, too much light in your pattern. Chrys’alir?” He cocked his head to the side as he walked his shuffling circle, much the stalking hyena. “Is it the Mirror Path you walk, boy?”

  Boy? Tannour hadn’t been called boy for nearly two decades.

  Behind him, Trell gave a cry of pain.

  Dore Madden’s face spread in a ghoulish smile.

  And Tannour realized that the wielder had just been toying with him all along.

  ***

  Trell danced the cortata as he fended off the warlord’s attack. The creature swung his blade with powerful strokes, forcing Trell on the defensive. Every clash of their blades felt like he was fighting a granite mountain. Their battle carried them quickly away from Tannour and the man the warlord had called Dore Madden.

  Dore Madden!

  The name carried power for Trell, and an unsettling apprehension.

  Here in the flesh was the wielder who’d bound Sebastian into servitude, the man who’d stolen his brother’s mind, his memories—his very will—and turned them to his own desires. Dore Madden had compelled Sebastian to slay their brother Ean, and had so bound him to the task that Sebastian had been unable to stop himself from trying to destroy their little brother, even after his memories were restored.

  In the wielder’s name, Trell understood why this Player wanted him alive, and what other Player he intended to use Trell against.

  Foreboding seeped like rot along his bones.

  Suddenly the path felt utterly wrong—everything he’d calculated; they could never prevail over a man of such power. He felt his conviction draining, his certainty growing clouded, and he stumbled in the cortata.

  Trell knew these thoughts couldn’t be his own, yet he couldn’t shake them off.

  The warlord pressed Trell back towards a column while the storm of power pouring from Tannour and Dore raged around them. Energies tore at Trell’s clothes and hair; explosions blinded him. A black wind blasted the column over Trell’s head. He threw himself to safety and watched from his knees as the power disintegrated the stone. Ash bloomed and was caught by the swirling energies, tracing disjointed patterns in the air.

  Trell got to his feet, feeling dull-headed and uncharacteristically demoralized.

  No matter how strongly he resisted, he couldn’t shake off what he knew had to be the wielder’s hold over his mind—disheartenment’s claws were sunk too deeply into him. All he could do was try to focus around the bleeding holes they left in his certainty.

  Trell spat ash from his mouth and placed a column between himself and Tannour’s ongoing battle with the wielder, praying the Vestian could eliminate him from the equation.

  The warlord walked out of the churning clouds. Ash stained his bone armor and clung to his black skin. He opened his arms and grinned malevolently. “Do you recognize me now?”

  DEPTHS TO DIE PRIN

  The face of the man who’d roped Trell to a trunk and dropped him into the Fire Sea stared blackly at him. His was the last face Trell had seen as he’d hit the waves, likewise his last fateful words: ‘Into the depths to die, princey!’

  Trell tasted ash. “Raliax of Saldaria.”

  The warlord barked a pleased laugh. “So you do remember!” He passed his sword between his hands while stalking Trell, black eyes gleaming. “When you were kissing our boots in the Kutsamak, you didn’t recall me at all. I was crushed.”

  “It’s this new look of yours.” Trell pushed through the pain of his pounding head and waved at Raliax with his blade. “It suits you.”

  The warlord clattered a curse and swung for him, and they danced back into battle.

  ***

  Tannour stood at a crossroads—no, at the point of two blades held to his throat. As he communed again to avoid another toxic whirlwind of patterns, he felt a discomfiting teetering of forces violently unbalanced, and an urgent need to get Trell out of there immediately.

  M
adden was holding too many black threads.

  Tannour couldn’t cut them all. He was constantly dodging the ones striking for him, which was becoming as futile as trying to avoid being hit by leaves in a hurricane. He knew with resounding certainty that if he didn’t use all of his gifts, he was going to lose. They were going to lose.

  But if he accessed all of his talent with the Sorceresy’s tattoos still binding him...fethe, he could lose more than everything.

  The wielder had a line onto Trell that Tannour couldn’t snap. He knew what that line meant. He knew what would happen if he couldn’t sever it. The knowing made him utterly cold.

  The wielder grinned wickedly and flung another matrix—fethe, but the vile man seemed to have an entire archive of patterns held readily to mind! Tannour communed too slowly, and a whisper of the pattern caught his arm before he disappeared. Pain seared him even as he dispersed each particle of himself into the aether.

  Live to fight another day! Live to fight another day!

  The tenets of his training confused his will, muddled his determination. For a moment, Tannour couldn’t reconvene. Couldn’t find form. The wielder was somehow interfering with his tether to Trell.

  Tannour floated in the aether, unfocused, bouncing on the tumult of patterns that were making a stormy sea of Air, drowning in the tempest while pain seared his thoughts and his hold on his tether flickered in and out.

  He could tell Madden was attacking him even while he communed—fethe, he had no idea how he was doing that.

  What did he cling to on the edge of annihilation? If he went down, what chance would Trell have?

  Tannour metaphorically gritted his teeth and forced himself back into form.

  The wielder had anticipated his reappearance.

  Blinding pain shot through Tannour as Dore Madden sliced his blade across Tannour’s throat and opened it from ear to ear.

  Tannour’s head hit the floor in searing agony. He convulsed, choking on his own blood, unable to breathe, unable to bind with Air.

  He had to commune—couldn’t commune—had to commune—

  ***

  While Trell fought his old enemy Raliax, the real battle was happening in his head, where despairing thoughts bombarded the walls of his resolve.

  I’ve failed.

  This was a mistake.

  My friends will die.

  I’ve doomed them all...

  They felt like his thoughts, yet the part of him still anchored to reason knew they couldn’t be. Even so, trying to focus on fighting while everything inside him was shouting surrender! required an incredible force of will.

  Raliax swung for his head. Trell blocked his blade, but the power of the blow sent him staggering back. He fell to one knee dizzily, and was momentarily overcome by the invading thoughts.

  The warlord swung again and sent Trell’s sword skittering out of his hand. He pinned his blade to Trell’s throat and forced him back, first to his hands, then to elbows, then flat on the ground.

  Trell gazed blurrily up the length of the blade, up the man’s arm, and into his black eyes. That miasma of keening thoughts told him this was the end.

  Yes, it is futile to resist.

  Searing pokers of compulsion stabbed Trell’s mind. Tears sprang to his eyes, and for a moment, he couldn’t draw breath. He lay gasping, eyes watering, his head feeling like an anvil was crushing it against the broken stones. He had no idea how to make his body move. The strings controlling his limbs had been severed.

  Across the room, Tannour’s wavering form collapsed. Trell strained his eyes, blinking tears as he watched a pool of blood spreading beneath the Vestian. His body flickered with refraction.

  The warlord bent over Trell, studying him at the end of his blade, holding his blurring gaze. Trell’s head was pounding so viciously that he saw Raliax in triplicate.

  The latter’s expression shifted from confusion into fury. He spun his head to the wielder. “Fecking let go of him! I said he’s mine!”

  Dore Madden stepped over the pool of blood spreading beneath Tannour and came towards them. “Fetch my shipment, you fool creature.” His voice sounded a dry complaint, the whine of a river rock caught in a millstone. “Without that thread of binding, you’re not long for this world. Come, and I’ll see what can be done, though I vow you don’t deserve it. My fortress will soon fall to your enemies due to your monumental incompetence.”

  Trell lay immobile, his vision blackening at the edges, all thoughts lost but the ones the wielder had given him, but he might’ve heard the warlord snarl, No! just before the wielder whisked his hand and flung the creature into a column. Stone and choking dust rained down on Trell.

  Once he’d stopped coughing and blinked dusty tears from his eyes, he found the wielder standing over him. Trell had never seen a man who more resembled Death.

  Oh, Sebastian...he closed his eyes for a brief moment while his skull continued to pound. He’d never admired his older brother more than in that moment’s understanding of what he’d endured for so many years.

  The wielder smiled down at him. His lips were formed of spidery lines, his teeth twisted. Trell couldn’t even see his eyes, only the shadows his bony brow cast across them. But he could feel his radiating malice like heat on his skin. “Yes, please, prince of Dannym. Resist me. Make it hard for me to break you. I deeply enjoy a challenge.”

  He took Trell by the collar of his cloak and started dragging him towards the node. Trell’s head struck a broken stone. Fiery pain flared briefly, and all thought died in blackness.

  Thirty-three

  “A man must have a game. If he doesn’t have one,

  he will make one. If that man is mentally unsound,

  he will make an intensely irrational and destructive game.”

  –The Fourth Vestal Raine D’Lacourte,

  on Dore Madden

  “...I do not know what will become of us all.”

  Shailabanáchtran carefully laid aside the ancient journal he’d been reading and sank back in his chair. At long last he’d found the location of the Quorum of the Sixth Truth’s sacred Shaido Archives, the place where he would surely unearth an answer to his centuries-long quest to learn who or what had torn the fabric of the Realms of Light, opening those worlds to Chaos.

  And to him and his brothers.

  He already had Jaro seeking the temple that housed the archives. Because the Quorum built their temples atop welds, the ancient cataclysm had torn both weld and temple out of alignment with the world grid. Thanks to the Archimandrite’s journal that Jaro had found for him, however, Shail now knew where that weld should’ve been. With Jaro searching it out using his weirwarden’s craft, it was only a matter of time before Shail gained the archives.

  A slight vibration trilled through the currents, echoes of a barely perceptible shudder from deep below. The lights in the obsidian temple flickered.

  Few of the temples once belonging to the Quorum of the Sixth Truth were stable. The second cataclysm—for which the Quorum itself was likely responsible—had damaged most of the temples beyond repair, save by someone of his quality.

  But no one of his quality would waste their time painstakingly reconstructing a thousands-of-years-old temple one crumbling crevice at a time when they could just as easily raise a new one from the chalk and ashes of the old.

  With that said, Shail suspected the tremors threatening this particular structure came from a more nascent disturbance, yet one which would be just as cataclysmic once it reached maturity.

  Ah...so many little rats upon their little tasks. It only took a few well directed ones gnawing at the foundation to set the whole structure toppling.

  With Darshan hopefully buried by now under a mountain of suckling revenants, and Ean val Lorian, aka the magnificent Arion Tavestra, once again vanquished by his hand, Shail was—dare he admit it?—beginning to enjoy himself.

  He’d sketched a picture of elaborate deception so exquisite that even Pelas at the height of his Imma
nuel di Nostri fame could not have drawn it better. Shail had but a few shadowed spaces yet to fill in, places needing illumination, delineation or a particular play of light, and the work would be complete.

  He couldn’t sketch in these places yet because he didn’t know what image belonged there. They represented mysteries that had come to his attention in recent months.

  One of those unfinished corners involved Alorin’s enigmatic Fifth Vestal.

  Once, Shail had imagined Björn van Gelderan to be an unsuspecting ally. Now he saw that the wielder had fooled even him—perhaps...especially him. But no longer. This area of his drawing would be filled in with forceful strokes.

  Across the room, darkness coalesced.

  Violet-black eyes like a raven’s iridescent wing appeared among the swirling vapors, followed by a visage of shifting planes. The dark mist solidified into a man’s head and torso. Then more of the figure—tall, broad of shoulder—stepped out of the mist, trailing wings of smoke.

  “Ah, perfect timing, Vleydis. Come with me.” Shail stood and swept from the chamber in a fluttering of silk robes, crimson flames to complement the Warlock’s shadowy vapors. “I have something that may be of interest to you.”

  “I’m always interested in your creations, Shailabanáchtran.”

  No doubt you are.

  He well knew the Warlock’s secret desires—capitalized on them, in fact.

  Shail had found Vleydis in the ruins of a Quorum temple, where the immortal had been lost for millennia, unable to coalesce. By force of will and an impressive display of power, Shail had summoned Vleydis back to consciousness and bound him in a troth of action. The Warlock had proven a reliable emissary between Shail and the Warlocks of Shadow, but Shail knew that Vleydis was ever seeking a way to be free of their accord.

  It was a delicate and nuanced cuisine he concocted, stringing along an immortal on a thin diet of hope.

  “What news from your brethren of Wylde?” Shail asked.

  Vleydis walked amid a wreath of smoke, trailing tattered-mist wings. Shail had never yet seen him solidify even as much as Sinárr could manifest. He wondered, in fact, if Vleydis could find solidity at all.