The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  Then, having gotten the teary part out of the way, Isabel turned all business. She started by handing him a round leather case about the length of both of his forearms, fitted with a strap for wearing across his chest.

  Isabel had looked him in the eye as she was handing it to him. “This is a weldmap.”

  Tanis reached to take it from her hands, but something in her manner, in her gaze or her tone, some subtle arch of brow told him it was far more than just a weldmap. As Tanis folded his hands around the leather case, he’d felt a sudden thrill go through him. “It’s Dagmar’s map, isn’t it?”

  “Yes it is, Tanis. It might be the most priceless artifact in this universe.” She released it into his hands. “It’s one of a bonded pair.”

  Tanis felt nervous just holding onto the thing. “Is it bonded to this case?”

  “No, love. To your life pattern.”

  His eyes flew back to hers. “Like Phaedor’s dagger?”

  “Exactly like Phaedor’s dagger.” Then she added with a smile, “Although, knowing your propensity for giving away precious treasures, I’ve put a few additional precautions in place.”

  She’d told him then what he needed to know about the map, and promised him that the bonding meant it would be impossible for him to lose it, which in no way alleviated his anxiety at carrying around the most priceless artifact in the universe on what amounted to a string around his chest.

  Then she’d called in the Eltanese, told them what Tanis was carrying—which had resulted in all of them staring bug-eyed at him for an uncomfortable count of minutes—and then she’d truthbound all of them on the secret.

  It wasn’t any sort of truthbinding Tanis had ever heard of.

  He and the Eltanese could talk about the map with each other, but Tanis was the only one who could mention the map to someone else. If someone tried to question any of them on the map using the fourth strand, then the truthbinding would initiate a reverse-vector impulse, making the other person forget what they were questioning them about.

  Tanis reflected that he ever stood in awe of his mother.

  Raine D’Lacourte had come in just before Isabel performed the binding. Tanis hadn’t seen the Vestal since their time in Cair Rethynnea. Tanis thought he looked almost...content.

  Since arriving in T’khendar, the Vestal had apparently been living and working with Cristien Tagliaferro, another truthreader who was his longtime friend and a member of the First Lord’s Council of Nine. Tanis’s mother had told him privately that reuniting with Cristien had done Raine a realm of good.

  After greeting Tanis kindly and making his introductions with the Eltanese—only Gadovan had met Raine before in Illume Belliel—the Vestal had explained he was there to see the High Mage of the Citadel work her special brand of magic.

  But Tanis knew his mother wanted Raine present because she couldn’t know if her power might fail her, and she needed him there to step in if anything should happen while she was laying in the truthbinding.

  Then, as if that excitement wasn’t enough, as the Eltanese were saying goodbye to Dagmar, Tanis’s mother had placed two gold Sormitáge rings in his palm and closed his fingers around them.

  Tanis’s eyebrows had shot skyward.

  These are more than just the rings you have earned, love of my heart. They’re each a stanza segreta. She’d winked as she added, Use them well.

  Then as Tanis was reeling from the fact that the High Mage of the Citadel had just made him a ringed truthreader and a ringed Nodefinder while his mother had given him an illicit Nodefinder’s coach to use for hiding all sorts of things away, they’d departed with no more fanfare than a warning to ‘stay alert.’

  Now, Tanis was a world away, trudging once more through a desert towards the unknown, and feeling the two patterned gold rings, which would only ever fit his own fingers, veritably burning his skin.

  Not that he wasn’t about as excited as he could be. This was the adventure of a lifetime. Only...he supposed he’d probably had his fair share of adventures of a lifetime already.

  One should never put a cap on adventure, Tanis. All experience is worth having.

  Tanis aimed at look at Pelas. All experience? He didn’t have to say things like being attacked by revenants and nearly having your life pattern unmade and getting locked in a tower thinking your power was lost. Pelas knew what he meant.

  All experience, his bond-brother repeated with the hint of a smile, if you learn something from it.

  Okay, I’m going to remember you said that.

  Pelas chucked. You’re not becoming a Seer now also?

  No, Tanis sighed, just a realist.

  Pelas laughed out loud, drawing curious gazes from the Eltanese. He settled a warm hand on the lad’s shoulder as they walked. The day you become a realist is the day I become mortal.

  As they neared the red city, Tanis saw that its flat-roofed buildings with their stark, rectangular windows were actually made of blocks of variegated colors, from pale tan to russet red, though when seen from afar, the darker became predominate.

  Palm trees and other foliage softened the last mile to the walls and offered a much-needed respite from the sun. Everywhere Tanis looked, he saw argan trees studded with climbing goats. Their bleats underscored the city’s distant hum.

  Pashmir spread for many miles around and across its hillside, a clearly affluent city from those parts of it revealed above its walls. An extraordinary palace crowned the city’s summit, overlooking the desert to the south and the mountains to the north.

  While still far away, they could tell that gardens terraced the hillside between high walls and the palace, whose domes glinted like nacre. Further west, and lording even higher than the palace, stood a tall, crenellated fort with thick, inwardly slanted walls. It looked formidable.

  They fell in with a stream of caravans and other travelers heading into the city and passed uneventfully beneath the walls. Inside, Pelas turned them to the east.

  “The city is divided by its castes,” Pelas murmured as they were pushing through a knot of hawkers trying to interest them in leather goods and carpets. “Foreign Adepts are tolerated as a necessary part of commerce, but we can’t stay just anywhere, not without papers. I know a place that caters to our kind so long you have deep pockets.”

  Mat asked, “Out of curiosity, do we have deep pockets?”

  Jude snorted. “Does the sun rise in the east?” Then he turned to Tanis and whispered, “It does rise in the east on your world, right?”

  Tanis was wondering at Pelas’s detailed knowledge of Pashmir as well as the odd confluence of emotions whispering through his bond-brother’s thoughts. “How do you know all of this?”

  Pelas clasped hands behind his back and continued roaming his gaze around. “I spent some time here, long ago.” His mind went quiet, a sure sign that he was keeping details of that time from Tanis.

  Tanis found the Avataren city crowded, unpleasantly hot, malodorous and altogether thrilling. Almost everyone wore desert robes or thawbs, though some of the more well-to-do merchants boasted kaftans of colorful silk, which seemed the garment of choice for the city’s more affluent citizens.

  They wound their way through the maze of traders’ stalls cluttering the lower city, and headed upward along a wide and busy street where the bazaar gave way to storefronts.

  Occasionally they would pass a multi-story building with balconies overlooking the road. Always the wrought-iron railings of such places were decorated by beautiful women and men dressed in expensive silks. There seemed to be a steady flow of other well-dressed people coming and going from these establishments, even in the middle of the day.

  Two astonishingly beautiful men standing on a lower balcony called out invitations to Mat in multiple languages. He clearly didn’t understand them, but their expressions made it clear that language wouldn’t matter for what they had in mind. Mat was looking a bit flushed.

  “I’ve never seen brothels quite like these,” he muttered
.

  Pelas murmured, “Only Avataren nobility are entitled to same-sex relationships.” He smiled and winked at the two men.

  The prostitutes threw both hands over their hearts and swooned dramatically. One of them invited Pelas in three languages to come back and steal his heart.

  Pelas looked to Mat. “So if that’s your preference, you either engage in an illicit affair or you have to pay for your pleasure. The brothels in every city are owned by the Furies—Avatar’s caste of princes—who are subject only to the Fire Kings.”

  “Which means, to not much at all,” Tanis finished quickly, having caught the rest of Pelas’s thought.

  Jude aimed a wistful look over his shoulder at a dark-haired beauty on a high balcony who was drawing a silk scarf suggestively across her barely-clad breasts. “Do you think—”

  “No,” Mat and Gadovan growled together.

  They reached a wide, central square that cut deeply into the city’s hill. Along the north side, multiple uneven stairways flowed down into the square—twisting stone waterfalls sporting colorful potted plants and countless citizens going about their day.

  On the east side, artists and craftsmen of all kinds had set up their booths and stalls, while the south side hosted shops and taverns whose chairs spilled out across the plaza. Everyone appeared to be doing good business.

  Tanis wouldn’t have minded stopping for something to eat—the wafting scents coming from the taverns smelled heavenly.

  “They wouldn’t serve you unless you concealed your nature, Tanis,” Pelas said, catching his thought. At the lad’s curious look, he added, “Your eyes would give you away if the rings didn’t.” He looked almost apologetic as he glanced at the others, though he surely had no responsibility for the discrimination; Avatar’s prejudices traced back to long before Pelas arrived in the realm. “Our inn will be this way.” He headed off to their right.

  An impressive central fountain dominated the plaza, and Tanis got a good look at it as they passed.

  It was a mountainous, multi-tiered sculpture. At its apex, a red jade fire god was besting a lion carved of the same stone. Beside them, but slightly lower down, an angelic being of pure alabaster was being devoured by an obsidian beast, while alternately adoring or frightened masses looked on from the third level—they were made from a mottled red, green and brown stone that Tanis didn’t recognize. The onlookers were meanwhile being crushed beneath massing clouds of the gods, made of tumultuous steel-grey marble.

  The fountain spoke with metaphor nine layers thick. There was a beauty to it, but also a darkness. It was astonishing and terrifying, captivating in a way that felt almost decadent. Tanis was drawn to it while at the same time being disturbed by it.

  He looked immediately and sharply to Pelas, who gave a resigned exhale by way of acknowledging the burning question in his gaze. “The stone you don’t recognize is jasper. Large lodes of it can be found in the Agni Sagara.”

  Gadovan looked to him. “How do you know that?”

  “Because he made it.” Tanis’s voice was thick with admiration. No matter how unsettling he found the fountain, it was still an incredible work of art.

  All three Eltanese really looked at Pelas then.

  “Made it,” Mat said, “as in...”

  “With a hammer and chisel.” Pelas was frowning at the fountain and its countless gushing, spurting, dazzling streams of water. It seemed a shocking indulgence, there in that arid place. “I did have to modify the jasper with the lifeforce to keep it from shattering, but otherwise...”

  They’d passed other, much smaller fountains where children played and people sat or even washed in the basins, but everyone was giving this fountain a wide berth.

  “Who commissioned it?” Tanis asked.

  “The Satrap at the time. The Furie considered it his personal property—I imagine his successor does also.”

  “Well, that explains why no one is bathing in it.”

  Pelas sighed again. “At least it seems to have held up well.” His gaze strayed around the plaza and noted the eyes fixed interestedly upon them. They stood out easily enough in their western clothes. “We should move on.”

  They continued uphill, drawing curiosity in their wake. Pelas took them down a different but equally busy road. Tanis fell in beside his bond-brother as they walked. “You know the weld is likely in that palace up there, right?”

  “The idea had occurred to me.”

  “Any idea how we’re going to get to it?”

  Pelas aimed a look uphill, though you couldn’t see the palace from that vantage. “The palace belongs to the Khashathra-pāvan, the Satrap here, who I’ve never met. He’s a Furie, very powerful and very rich. His palace will be extremely well protected.”

  “The Khashathra-pāvan of Pashmir,” Tanis mused. Why does that sound familiar?

  As he tried to envision ways of getting inside the palace without drawing undue notice to themselves, Tanis reflected on the irony of their undertaking.

  He traveled with one of the most powerful immortals to ever walk their realm, yet for want of avoiding notice—from Balance itself as much as from those who might stand to oppose their efforts—Pelas necessarily had to limit his involvement.

  Cosmically, he and Darshan were balancing the field against Shail and Rinokh. It was vitally important that Pelas did nothing to upset that equilibrium. Pelas felt like his every step was upon eggshells, and he was trying not to crack a single one.

  Of course, Tanis wasn’t without his own gifts, and he had more leeway than Pelas did to act. Still, they couldn’t just barge in wielding elae and demand to be taken to the weld, or throw everyone under compulsion and waltz through unimpeded, or even freeze time and wander past unnoticed.

  Well...they could, but Tanis didn’t think that they should. He had to be smart in his use of elae. Firstly, Avatar wasn’t exactly hospitable to his kind. He knew from experience that Adepts could be trapped and made as powerless as any na’turna with something as simple as magic rope. It would be folly to think himself invincible, even bound to a Malorin’athgul.

  Secondly, and almost more important to him personally, he couldn’t break Adept laws that would reflect badly upon his family. He was his mother’s son, and his father’s, and his uncle’s nephew, and whether or not anyone knew him by name just then, one day they would.

  Besides which, his uncle and Dagmar had impressed upon them that their venture was exceptionally delicate and untenable. The cosmos had been spiraling for a long time in one direction and by the very nature of this momentum, it would be pulling against them, resisting their efforts to set it to rights.

  The instant they opened a weld into Shadow, all of that enormous momentum would come to a shuddering halt and then rebound right back at them. They all had to be ready for the cosmic backlash, which could manifest in untold ways.

  All of which was to say, getting into the Satrap’s palace wasn’t the problem. Getting out again very well might be.

  Soon after leaving the plaza, clay walls became cut stone, palm and date trees shaded the lanes, and tenement homes and storefronts gave way to riads hosting tall-walled gardens. The crowds thinned, and the arid air softened with the hint of moisture from hidden fountains.

  Eventually, Pelas turned them down a side street that hugged the hill instead of barreling up it—for which Tanis’s burning thighs gave thanks—and they soon came to an inn. The walls were whitewashed and looked beautifully clean against the surrounding date palms. Tanis saw no sign with any sort of name, but a symbol he didn’t recognize hung over the pointed-arch opening.

  “It means they welcome anyone,” Pelas said, catching Tanis’s curiosity, “Adept and otherwise.”

  “You’re serious about this,” Mat said.

  Pelas turned him a telling look. “Adepts are considered of the lowest caste in Avatar—lowlier than animals, yet necessary to the Avataren social structure. Or at least to the luxury to which the aristocracy have become accustomed. Adepts are
simultaneously needed and despised. It’s an uncomfortable paradox, even for the Avatarens.”

  Inside the inn, Pelas waved them down a hallway echoing with the hum of conversation and himself went to secure their rooms.

  Tanis followed the Eltanese to the left. He saw protective patterns everywhere: hiding among the mosaics on the walls, scribed into embellishments carved over doorways and arches, or beneath windowsills, even at times on the paving stones themselves.

  “This place is a fortress,” Tanis murmured as they were walking down the arched corridor towards what had to be a tavern, if told from the clink of glassware and general hum of languages coming from that direction.

  Gadovan turned him a look. “How so?”

  “There are protective patterns all over the place. The walls are reinforced with the second and the fifth. There’s some kind of shield around every exterior opening, though I can’t tell what it’s meant to shield against. There’s a fourth strand warding throughout the entire building, linked room to room on a magnetic chain. It’s...I’ve never seen anything like it. Not even in Faroqhar.”

  “What’s Faroqhar?” Jude asked.

  “Never mind Faroqhar.” Mat frowned slightly at Tanis, his blue eyes interested but alert. “What are the patterns doing?”

  “Never mind that—he just said they were protecting the place, Mat.” Gadovan looked Tanis over intently. “How do you know the patterns are even there, lad? You’d need to study the currents for hours to get such detailed knowledge about the patterns in play.”

  Tanis shrugged. “I can see them.”

  All three Eltanese came to a standstill.

  “You can see patterns?” Jude stared at him.

  Tanis cursed his big mouth. The Eltanese already didn’t know what to make of him—half the time Mat looked at him like some new type of life form—and now he’d gone and given them yet another reason to think of him strangely.