The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  Neither of the captains had so far noticed that the king was sitting on his horse atop the stony outcropping above them.

  “Besides,” Rafferty added, “I haven’t heard you come up with a better plan for getting us all home.”

  “It’s not the plan. It’s the place.” Tavon exhaled a cloud of bluish smoke, which the perpetual breeze of their high elevation quickly snatched away. He looked to Rafferty. “You don’t feel it?”

  Rafferty shook his head. “You’ve inhaled too much of that desert weed. It’s doing things to your brain—which I have to say, wasn’t in admirable shape to begin with.”

  Tavon looked faintly injured. “The leaf calms me. It’s grounding.”

  “It’s what?”

  “Anyway, my gut is telling me things are going to go to hell any day now and we need to be ready.”

  “Ready. For what?”

  Tavon gave him a look. “For things to go to hell.”

  Rafferty made a swirling motion with his hand. “And?”

  “We need some kind of plan.”

  Rafferty stared bewilderedly at him. “A plan for what?”

  “For what to do when things go to hell. Are you even listening to what I’m saying?”

  “I’m still trying to figure out what you’re saying.”

  Tavon paused to take a long drag on his smoke. Then he pinched it between his fingers and gestured to Rafferty. “I’m saying that when Belloth’s hells open up to suck us down, we need an escape plan.”

  Rafferty shook his head. “You’re daft, man. That weed has poisoned your brain.”

  Tavon shoved the smoke back between his lips. “I’m telling you, it’s coming. A wave—a whole bloody tide. Darkness swooping in. I can sense it. Just like that time in the Qar’imali.”

  Rafferty gave him a swift look. “The Qar’imali. Are you sure?”

  Tavon blew smoke again. “How many were there? Three hundred to our seventy?” He shook his head. “This time it’ll be worse, I guarantee you.”

  Rafferty looked suddenly concerned. “Nadoriin this far north?”

  “Nah.” Tavon scrunched up his face and scratched his chin, appearing to think on the matter. “Can’t really say what’s coming on that tide. I s’pose it could be...nothing.” He tossed a meaningful grin at Rafferty.

  Rafferty deflated. “You’re a right bastard. You know that?”

  Tavon kept grinning. “If you weren’t so bloody gullible.”

  Rafferty shook his head. “That thing you did in the Qar’imali was unnatural.”

  Tavon gave him a self-satisfied smirk. “I have my moments.”

  “One long moment interspersed with brief bouts of questionable reason,” Rafferty grumbled.

  “But seriously...it doesn’t chivvy your twins thinking about what might happen crossing this so-called Seam? Getting separated into Belloth knows where, finding yourself suddenly in a fire desert or flung to Palma Lai—”

  “I hear Palma Lai is quite nice,” Rafferty inserted. “Very peaceful. Grounding, even.”

  Tavon eyed him tetchily. “You’re not likely to feel grounded falling off the bloody Pattern of the World.”

  “But how likely are we to fall off the Pattern of the World?”

  “As ambulatorily-challenged as you are, I’d say you ought to consider it likely.”

  Rafferty spied him aggrievedly. “Ambulatorily-challenged isn’t a word.”

  “It’s a compound word.”

  “You made that up.”

  Tavon exhaled a cloud of smoke. “If the shoe fits, Captain...”

  Rafferty grunted. “What was that other word you made up? Culinaverse?”

  Tavon thrust his smoke at Rafferty. “You have to admit that private had an unnatural aversion to cooking.”

  “I think he was more averse to your recipe than the idea itself.”

  “The nomads in the Qar’imali eat scorpion stew all the time. Add some rosemary, a bit of fenugreek. Mind, it tastes like crawfish gone bad, but you can eat it.”

  Rafferty just gazed at him like Tavon was proving his earlier point.

  Gydryn understood their nervousness about this course. No rational man would see so many deleterious variables and not be a little unnerved.

  Gydryn turned his gaze northward, following the line of his marching men to where the valley ended in a green bowl of hills nestled in the half-moon embrace of the mountain. His army was collecting in that valley, setting up a temporary camp while they waited on Prince Farid to next direct them.

  West and north off the bowl ran a steep-sided gorge where Farid was testing nodes, trying to find one that would take them towards their next step home. When last he’d reported in, things were not going well.

  There were two hundred nodes in that part of the gorge, according to the prince. He would have to travel each one to discover a node that connected to another group farther north along the Seam. Many nodes simply looped back. He would step off and find himself a hundred paces—or twenty leagues—behind where he’d started. A taxing proposition when every step across the Pattern of the World demanded some of his own lifeforce in the crossing. Gydryn had never seen the prince so exhausted.

  Yet he persisted, as they all must.

  Gydryn couldn’t let anything turn them from this path. Whether by luck or fate or divine will, he’d been granted a new chance at life. His treasured middle son had been returned to him alive and thriving, and he now had an opportunity to right the wrongs of the misguided purpose that had consumed him for nearly a decade. As king, he was meant to be his people’s compass. Too long had his needle wavered. Too long had he let Radov’s guile turn his arrow from true north.

  Never again.

  Gydryn felt a persistent tugging now, the drive of purpose: to reunite with Errodan, with his people; to apologize for his mistakes and beg another chance to lead them true; and he felt an urgency to arrive before Morwyk could claim the throne—not because Gydryn wanted it for himself, necessarily, but because Stefan val Tryst’s idea of a strong kingdom was a society where no man dared think his own thoughts.

  Commotion among the troops drew Gydryn’s gaze to the south. He watched the lines of men breaking apart to allow a rider to gallop through their ranks.

  “Who’s that?” asked Tavon from the hillside below. “Drustan?”

  “I think one of the scouts,” Rafferty murmured. “Coming from the peak, from the looks of him.”

  “Rafferty,” the king rumbled from above.

  The two captains turned swiftly with startled intakes of breath. They craned their heads to peer up at him. “Oh, um...yes, Your Majesty?” Rafferty looked a bit wide-eyed and Tavon culpable.

  “Please find Loran and Ramsay and ask them to join me here,” the king said.

  Rafferty pressed a fist to his chest, then ran for his horse, which was grazing further along the hillside.

  Tavon squinted uneasily up at the king. “Uh...Your Majesty, I hope you know I didn’t mean—”

  “I’ve never opted to regulate a man’s opinions, Tavon. That’s Morwyk’s purview.” Gydryn nodded towards the distant rider. “Ride down and escort the scout to me forthwith.”

  “Aye, Sire.” He mounted up and spun his horse to the south.

  Gydryn watched him speeding across the hillside, feeling an edgy discomfort. What would’ve sent one of their outlying scouts flying back in such a panic?

  The Duke of Marion and Captain Ramsay val Baran arrived with Rafferty just as the scout was cantering his horse up the incline, followed closely by Tavon.

  “What’s this about, Sire?” Loran asked as the scout and Tavon were both reining in their horses on the hillside below.

  Gydryn’s eyes remained fixed on the scout. “We’re about to find out.”

  The scout’s horse was lathered, and the man himself hardly looked the better for wear. He dismounted and fell to one knee, fist pressed to his heart. “Your Majesty! My Lord Duke.”

  Loran waved him to rise. “What news
?”

  The scout said breathlessly as he reclaimed his feet, “A force is heading towards us, Sire.”

  Gydryn and Loran exchanged a look.

  “What kind of force?” Loran rumbled.

  “It’s...black, Your Grace.” The scout’s eyes assumed the gleam of a man who’d witnessed things he could never forget. He pushed a hand through his damp hair and looked to the south. “A dark tide coming towards us.”

  “Black armor?” asked Ramsay. He looked curiously to Loran. “What say you, Lord Duke? Mercenaries of some kind?”

  “It’s not armor they’re wearing, Captain.” The scout lifted that same edgy stare to Ramsay. “They’re not...” he swallowed, “...human. They’re—”

  “Eidola.” The king closed his eyes.

  Somehow, one of his enemies had found them.

  When he opened his eyes again, the others were staring at him, bound by a tense silence. They had no idea what eidola were, but Gydryn’s reaction had surely communicated what kind of threat the creatures posed.

  “How many?” the king asked. A force of fifty had nearly overrun Raku. But the Lady Mithaiya had seared all of those creatures to ash. Surely Radov didn’t have that many more at his disposal?

  The scout looked shakily up at him. “Hundreds, Sire.”

  Gydryn’s heart lodged in his throat.

  His horse snorted uneasily beneath him, sensitive to the electric dismay suddenly coursing through his thoughts.

  A mystified Loran shifted his gaze between Gydryn and the scout. “Hundreds dinnae seem worthy of—”

  “How long?” the king choked out. “How long before they’re upon us?”

  “Hours.” The scout looked nervously between the king and his bemused officers. “Half a day at most. They’re moving fast.”

  Hundreds.

  Hours.

  For the space of an indrawn breath, a howling chorus of How?How?How? assaulted Gydryn’s reason. Then he speared into action.

  “Rafferty,” the king’s tone was so forceful that the captain actually jumped, “get into that gorge and find Prince Farid. Bring him to me the instant he steps off a node.”

  Rafferty bounded onto his horse and heeled the animal into a gallop.

  As Rafferty was racing off, the king turned to Tavon. “Engineer, you’re with me. Loran, Ramsay, you come too.” Looking back to the scout, he ordered, “Return to the peak. Sound the horns the moment these things clear the valley’s southern edge. But stay out of sight, and do not engage.”

  “Yes, Sire.” The scout mounted up and sped away.

  Gydryn reined his horse north and stormed laterally across the hillside, paralleling the lines of men marching in the valley basin.

  He heard shouts from his officers, calling to the men to keep at the march. Doubtless he was making quite a spectacle racing across the hillside with two captains and a duke chasing his wake.

  Gydryn studied the topography as his horse flew in a rush of thudding hooves, whisking grass and blurring wind, but his eyes only confirmed the conclusion that his instincts had first leapt to: their only chance of surviving an eidola attack was to not be there when the creatures arrived.

  But shade and darkness! Getting seven thousand men across a node in a few hours’ time? He might as well have expected magic carpets to soar down from the sky and whisk them away.

  Reaching the bowl of hills and its crowning half-moon ridge of granite that demarked the end of the valley, Gydryn turned his horse hard to the left, cantered across a wide, shallow creek and entered the gorge.

  On either side, moss-covered stone sheered upwards for several hundred paces to frame a blue strip of sky. According to Farid, who had explored the gorge from one end to the other, the steep-sided chasm undulated for nearly five miles before dead-ending in a horsetail waterfall.

  Gydryn drew rein inside the gorge and turned his horse in a circle. A quick assessment told him everything he needed to know.

  He called to Ramsay just as the captain was riding up. “Spread the word to every officer, Ramsay. Get the men in here as quickly as possible.”

  To his credit, Ramsay just nodded and spun his horse back around.

  Gydryn studied the gorge’s emerald-shrouded entrance as Ramsay was galloping through it. A great river had probably carved the chasm, but all that was left to mark its passing was the wide, sandy bottom and an unassuming creek notching its way along the base of the western wall.

  The place had a labyrinthine feel. The riverbed zigzagged among colossal, moss-eaten cliffs, and the steep walls diffused the sunlight, save when the orb hovered directly overhead.

  Gydryn saw no sign of Rafferty or Prince Farid. He guessed the former was searching for the latter farther within the gorge.

  Loran and Tavon reined in their horses to either side of him. The duke tossed his mane of black hair out of his face and settled fierce blue eyes on Gydryn. “Are ye gonna tell us what’s happenin’ now, Sire, or are we meant t’work it out fer ourselves?”

  Gydryn studied the top of the ridge. “I’ll explain in a moment, Loran. Tavon,” he turned to the combat engineer, “see how the two sides of the gorge reach inward towards each other at the entrance?”

  Tavon followed the king’s gaze upwards. “Aye, Sire.”

  “What would it take to collapse those outcroppings and block the opening?”

  Tavon considered his request with hard eyes fixed on the rock. “We’d have to blast from both sides with charges set into the face. I’d need experienced climbers to scale the cliffs and set the charges.”

  “Do you have the necessary explosives?”

  Tavon scrubbed at his dark hair. “I should have enough saltpeter and sulfur to create a mix for blasting. Lachlan keeps the charcoal with the army’s rations...but yes, I can do it. It will probably take a couple of hours.”

  “That may be all the time we have.”

  Ramsay came charging back into the gorge and announced as he neared, “The men are heading this way now, Sire.”

  Gydryn nodded tensely. He felt the hourglass sands falling far too quickly. “Tavon, take the men you need and get those charges set.”

  “Aye, Sire.” Tavon spun his mount and stormed away.

  The muted rhythm of more galloping horses drew Gydryn’s gaze over his shoulder. Rafferty was returning with Prince Farid. The latter’s white robes billowed as he raced down the dry riverbed, churning a wake of sand.

  “You’ll have your answers soon, Loran,” Gydryn murmured with his eyes on the Akkadian prince.

  Farid hauled back on his reins in a splay of sand. He seemed about to say something, then noticed Gydryn’s expression, whereupon his own sobered considerably. “What is it?”

  Gydryn met his gaze. “Eidola. Apparently hundreds of them.”

  Farid blanched. “Hundreds? Who has that many eidola to send against us?”

  “However it happened, they’re hours away.”

  Farid cursed heatedly in his own tongue. His horse became flighty beneath his agitation, and the prince stroked its neck to settle it. When the horse had calmed, the prince returned a grave look to the king. “Ana asif, Your Majesty. We must ask Inithiya to take our spirits quickly.”

  “We’re not abandoning hope just yet, Prince Farid.”

  “Sire.” Loran inserted a frustrated protest, finally putting voice to the argument he’d clearly been wanting to make for half a turn of the glass. “Surely a few hundred of these things—whatever they are—can’t be much of a threat to our thousands.”

  Farid exchanged a look with the king. Gydryn saw his own feelings of horror, outrage and impotence reflected in the prince’s gaze.

  “Eidola are creatures of magic, Lord Duke.” Farid pulled off his turban and scrubbed a hand through his ebony curls. Gydryn had never seen him so discomposed. “Black magic, according to the Lady Mithaiya. We nearly lost Raku in facing barely fifty of the creatures—and would have, along with all of our lives, if not for the drachwyr returning when she did.”<
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  Loran swung a hot stare to the king. Gydryn in turn felt an agonizing urgency. Every breath wasted on explanation was one better spent in action, but he needed his officers to understand the threat they were facing.

  “I watched an eidola rip off a soldier’s arms with its bare hands, Loran, and saw another one punch out a man’s heart straight through his chest. The only blade that can harm them is Merdanti, and we have scarce few of those.” Without the Emir’s generosity and foresight, they wouldn’t have had any.

  Farid said, “When you see a tsunami coming towards you, Lord Duke, you don’t try to withstand it. You flee.”

  “Which is what we have to do, Farid.” Gydryn looked back to the prince, seeking his gaze and his agreement both. “Move as many men as possible across any node you can find.”

  Farid muttered something in his own tongue that might’ve been a curse...or a prayer. It was difficult to tell from his fierce expression. He looked back over his shoulder, and Gydryn saw his gaze tighten, his lips forming a thin line.

  What must’ve been running through the prince’s head? Gydryn knew the torment of his own dark thoughts. He was holding them off with a thin scrim of will.

  Farid looked back to the king. “There is a node, but it’s dangerous.”

  “More dangerous than eidola?”

  “Yes.”

  Gydryn puffed an incredulous exhale. “Have you any other ideas?”

  The prince growled an oath. “No, by Inanna’s blood.”

  Beyond the diffuse daylight of the gorge, the first men of Gydryn’s army appeared, jogging ten abreast.

  Farid’s dark eyes noted the men. “Tell them to put on their cloaks.” Then he reined his horse in a tight circle and stormed back into the depths of the gorge.

  Gydryn looked to Rafferty. “You know where he’s going?”

  Looking wan, Rafferty nodded.

  “Get as many men to him as fast as possible.”

  The afternoon fled faster than the men.

  By the time the sun fell behind the western rim, thousands were jammed into the emerald-walled gorge with more still trailing in. Their movement had slowed to a Chelonian pace.

  Farid was managing to transport roughly a hundred soldiers at a time, a thousand for every full turn of the glass, but the effort was costing him greatly according to Rafferty, who reported in every hour to keep Gydryn abreast of their progress. At last accounting, Farid was still on his feet but looking haggard.