He let himself drift with the slow sway of the grass. It mingled with the low pulsing in his head, and after a while, it seemed as if he were moving with it. Side to side. Not with the ebb and tide of the breeze, rather with his own rhythm and that of the grass. When he closed his eyes, he could still almost see the haze covering the grass, but now he was beneath it and its force worked at him.
He let it take him. Let it move him. And he drifted.
He wasn’t sure how long he had lain there when he heard his name.
It came from a distance, from another place. Pulled toward the voice, Jakob felt dragged from his rest. He opened his eyes slowly, fearing this place of calm had been only a dream.
“Jakob!”
Jakob sat up, propping himself up on his elbows before looking around. Brohmin stood near the edge of the circle of grasses, searching for something.
“Over here,” he answered.
Brohmin turned to him quickly, and rushed over to him.
“What is it?” he asked.
Brohmin sighed softly. “I couldn’t find you.”
Jakob smiled. “I was just relaxing and enjoying the beautiful day.”
Brohmin stared at him oddly for a moment before replying. “This grass has a way of hiding things in it.”
He could believe that. All he wanted to do was lie back down and relax again, but Brohmin motioned him to follow.
When they reached the place where he’d first woken, he found Salindra waiting, the same anxiety on her face as Brohmin’s. “What is it?” he asked.
She frowned. “We’ve been looking for you for—”
Brohmin cut her off with a slight shake of his head. “Sit,” he instructed. “Are you hungry?” Brohmin offered him a stack of rolled up leaves.
He took the food Brohmin offered, but his stomach moaned for more than greens. It ached for one of the hares Brohmin was so adept at catching. He chewed at the leaf and found it sweet, though the texture was strange, and like nothing he had anticipated.
“Not what you thought it would be?” Brohmin laughed.
“No. It was… wonderful.”
“Try this.”
Jakob took a fruit with bright orange streaked with red, similar to what he had seen high above in the trees, and his gaze drifted upward.
Brohmin pulled another from his leather pack and bit into it. “I didn’t climb, if that’s what you were thinking. These fruits will fall when they are ready. They aren’t ripe until they fall.” Brohmin looked at the tree line again. “If I could pull one from the branches, it would be poison to us.”
Jakob slowly bit into the fruit he held. It was much like an apple, though sweeter. Its rind was soft, somewhat chewy, and silken to his tongue. He took a bigger bite and devoured it quickly. It was delicious.
He was still hungry when he finished, and felt like he hadn’t eaten in weeks. “No hare this time?” he asked Brohmin.
“Not in this place. You won’t taste the flesh of animal often here.”
Salindra scooted closer to him, studying him as he ate. “How do you feel?”
He shrugged. “Fine, I suppose. How am I supposed to feel?”
She laughed. Jakob hadn’t heard the Mage laugh before. “You’ve been out for two days now.”
Two days? He remembered the pull of the grass, could still see it if he looked, and knew that he could rest here a long time. Could I have slept two days?
He did feel refreshed. “Why would I have slept so long?”
Brohmin and Salindra glanced at each other. “How’s your shoulder?” Brohmin asked, nodding toward his right shoulder.
He remembered the wound he’d sustained and fingered the skin under his shirt, finding it tender.
What had happened to him?
He remembered the spear. Remembered breaking it off from his shoulder. He could almost still feel the pain that had pulled at him, almost bringing him to his knees. But there was no scar now, only a little tenderness. Nothing like he would have expected.
“How is it gone?” He shouldn’t have been able to heal as quickly as he had… unless Salindra had healed him, but he didn’t think that likely. There was something wrong with her, though he didn’t know what. Had Brohmin healed him?
“Answers will come,” Brohmin said.
Salindra reached for his shoulder. When he started pulling away from her, she patted his leg and whispered, “Shh.” She reached carefully under his shirt and gently felt for his wound. She looked up quickly, catching his eyes, before turning to Brohmin. “The wound is gone. It was still healing when we left to gather the fruits.”
“Gone?” Brohmin asked.
Salindra nodded, feeling again under his shirt.
Brohmin glanced toward the trees, then at the grassy plain, forcing Jakob to look around and vocalize the question that had plagued him since awakening. “Where are we?”
“Avaneam,” Brohmin said. “At least, where it leads. It’s a special place. One few know.”
“We were in the mountains.”
“In Avaneam, one step takes you to the mountain peak, the other…”
Jakob looked around at the strange surroundings. Trees and fruits and grass unlike anything he had ever seen or heard about surrounded him.
He suddenly realized where they were.
“The Unknown Lands?” he asked.
Brohmin nodded.
“How is this possible?” So many had tried to reach these lands but none had ever managed to cross the Great Valley. Stories were told of the attempts, stories he had read, like those of Jarren Gildeun, and others. How had he managed?
“Avaneam is a special place,” Brohmin repeated.
Jakob reached his hand under his shirt again, slowly fingering the tender area, remembering the pain of the spear. He sat like that for a while—his hand under his shirt and his eyes locked down on the ground. A light haze clung to the ground, and he swayed with it.
Memories came back to him slowly. He could almost feel the cool of the mountain air, the sting of the rock as it sliced his hands climbing, and the black fog as it rolled toward them…
“How were the groeliin beaten?” he asked. The word flowed off his tongue, effortlessly. He stopped a moment, thinking a little more. “Last I can remember, they were coming toward us and…” The answer wouldn’t come. There was more to it, but he found his memory full of holes.
There was something else about the groeliin attack. He suddenly remembered another attack. It was in a different time, and he was all alone. He remembered watching as they neared, he could still feel the ground rumble as he opened it around him, and he could feel the pain as the spear hit him.
Jakob reached for his shoulder again and touched it gently as he remembered words spoken to him from a voice inside his head.
You could have stopped that, too.
What was going on with him? Was it that madness? He had thought that he’d been spared, that everything he’d feared happening to him had an explanation, but that… that had no explanation.
“Yes. About that.” Brohmin smiled. “There are few who know that name. It has not been known for centuries. How is it that you know it?”
The question, so innocuous, yet piercing. How to explain what he himself did not understand? “I…” He turned his face to the sky as he struggled for an answer. What would he say so they didn’t think him going mad? “I must have read it somewhere.” Did Novan’s texts ever record the word? He couldn’t remember but thought it possible. “Maybe you’ve used it before?”
“I have not,” Brohmin said.
The words came out slowly, even softly, though they thundered in his ears. What could he say? Do I tell them of the dreams? Yet they were only dreams, nothing real to them.
Except the spear. That had been real enough.
“I’ve heard you use the word before,” Salindra said to Brohmin. “When I first met you, and we saw them outside the town. You said the word then, called them… whatever.”
Jakob
watched a gaze pass between the two. Salindra seemed to offer a challenge before backing away. He would have smiled in different circumstances.
“You said it then, by the gods I say you did,” Salindra continued. “And I cannot be certain you haven’t said it since. Besides,” she went on in a lighter tone, “what’s the difference? You said it hasn’t been known in hundreds of years and yet you know it. He is an apprenticed historian; why can’t the boy know it too?”
Brohmin laughed, and it was a throaty sound that echoed across the plain. “I know many things that haven’t been known in a long time, Salindra,” Brohmin said. “But you’re right. It is nothing.” He turned to Jakob again. “You ask about the groeliin, a name I have only heard spoken by a few others.” He smiled as he spoke, but Jakob recognized the accusation and had no answer. “How did you see them so easily? They’re creatures that can’t be seen by many men—an ability they have—and few Magi could even see them at the distance you spotted them.”
“Salindra could have—”
“I wouldn’t have seen them until they were nearly upon us without your warning. They blended into the rock, practically invisible.” Salindra shook her head slowly. “By the time I saw them, it didn’t even matter.”
“I too was only able to see them with your warning,” Brohmin said, the hint of a smile on his face disappearing. “Yet you sensed them before they crested the hill. How was that?”
The fog, he knew. The black fingers, the way it filled the valley. It was like the vision from his dream, and he had remembered the horrible creatures’ faces, their teeth, their grotesque bodies, and known fear.
Brohmin interrupted his thoughts. “Jakob, we don’t ask to scare you. We ask to understand.” The man paused for a moment, holding his gaze. “You saved our lives on that mountain. In more ways than you can know.”
He looked between them before sighing. “I don’t know how I saw them. I just felt something wrong. I can’t really explain it much more than that.” He didn’t know how to explain the black fog he saw. Or dreams becoming real. Far easier for them to understand him feeling strange.
“Many men feel a strangeness when groeliin appear. Many more become sick. Yet most cannot see them.”
“I don’t know. I wish I had a better answer, Brohmin, but I don’t know.” He stared at his hands, flashes of the vision coming to him. He remembered the power he’d possessed, how he had managed to move the rock. How was that possible? “How were they beaten?”
Brohmin considered him for a long moment. “Rocks fell on them.”
“Salindra?” He might not have seen her use her abilities since traveling with them, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been the one to kill them—even if it didn’t fit with the Urmahne beliefs. Even as he asked, it didn’t feel right, and didn’t fit with his memory.
She turned away.
“Salindra is wounded,” Brohmin said when Salindra didn’t answer. “A grave injury to one of the Mageborn, but something difficult to see. She served in Rondalin as the Great Teacher of the city, once an exalted position, and one of the few remaining Magi advisors. She was an influential Mage until the Deshmahne came to Rondalin. The king named one as his advisors, a Deshmahne more powerful than any other, a man who hid what he was until it was too late,” Brohmin said.
“He is no man,” Salindra spat.
Jakob looked at her. “The High Priest?”
Brohmin nodded. His eyes drifted to Salindra’s legs and he reached for and lifted her skirt, exposing her ankles. She didn’t flinch. Dark lines were etched into the skin, forming three fangs tattooed along both ankles. Something seemed to ooze from the marks.
“These runes drain a Mage of her abilities.” The words seemed almost distasteful to Brohmin. “I can do little but delay the effect.”
Jakob wondered—how could Brohmin delay it?
Salindra’s eyes reddened and she wiped away a tear. “I have some small amount of my ability left, though it taxes me almost more than I can stand.” The words were soft, not quite a whisper. She caught his eye. The strength of the gaze told him she could indeed have been a Great Teacher. “I no longer have near the strength required to pull those rocks down.”
If not Salindra, then who?
Brohmin didn’t offer the answer.
“Can she be healed?” Jakob asked.
“I don’t know,” Brohmin answered.
They fell silent for a while, and Jakob began to feel the slow pulling of the grass again and swayed with it. He let his thoughts wander, his mind empty, and felt only the swaying and the slow pulsing in his head. It was peaceful.
Finally, he turned and looked at Brohmin. “What is all of this? I mean—how are we here?”
Brohmin sat quietly for a moment. “You both deserve an explanation,” he said. “It is a story older than you or I, and one the histories no longer record.” He looked them both in the eyes before continuing. “I will start the story by asking a question. You have seen the Deshmahne High Priest?” he asked Jakob.
The man haunted him, even in his dreams. He had felt the weight of his terrible gaze, had known how difficult it was to turn away. There was fear and hopelessness when he saw the High Priest. He would not easily forget it.
“Long ago, he was known as Raime sen’Rohn,” Brohmin began. “Raime was a member of an ancient council. Few men sat on this council, and it was a privilege that he had been asked.” Brohmin’s dark eyes had taken on a faraway look as he spoke, and his voice was subdued. “When this council met, their purpose was simple. Peace. They, like those of the council before them, worked for peace.”
“The Conclave?” Jakob asked, thinking of the overheard comments between Novan and Endric.
Brohmin smiled. “Indeed. The Conclave has existed a long time, perhaps as long as man. Started in a time of much war, much bloodshed. The Conclave knew the peace of the world was spiraling out of control, that all would be lost…” As he trailed off, his eyes came back to focus as he looked at Salindra, then Jakob.
“Theirs was a concern for more than mankind; they feared creation lost.” Brohmin held up his hands. “I do not know why—it was never recorded—but they worked to protect that which the Maker had created.”
“The Maker?” Salindra asked. “You mean the gods. Urmahne?”
“Your gods?” Brohmin smiled slightly. “They are an extension of the Maker, but they did not create.”
“Brohmin! That is blasphemy!”
Jakob didn’t hear the rest of what she said. Brohmin’s words had struck a chord, a memory, faint, but real, came to him. A dream of Shoren, a dream of gods.
We are but an extension of the Maker.
How could he have known this?
“Those were the words Shoren used in my dream,” Jakob said to himself.
“What?” Brohmin asked.
“In the Great Forest, when I dreamt of Shoren,” he explained. “There was a Choosing, and he was meeting a man for the first time, a man who thought Shoren was a god.” Jakob paused. He felt strange speaking of it but felt compelled to explain. “Shoren said he was but an extension of the Maker.”
Brohmin frowned. “You saw the Choosing?”
Jakob nodded.
Salindra eyed him strangely.
“Who else was there?” Brohmin asked.
Jakob thought for a moment. He dreamed as Shoren, remembered the other gods of the dream, but someone else stuck out. “There was a man named Chon,” he answered. “He seemed to know Shoren.”
A memory drifted to the forefront of his mind. Would that it could be Chon…
“You saw the first Conclave,” Brohmin whispered.
“Who was chosen?” Salindra asked.
Brohmin answered. “That would be Aalleyn Tompen,” he said quietly. “The first Uniter.”
“Uniter?” Salindra asked. “That sounds like—”
“The practice the Magi have failed following descends from this council. The Conclave created the mahne. It is this the Magi f
ollow. They are the true founders of the Urmahne.” Salindra shook her head, but Brohmin ignored it. “Throughout time, they have chosen a Uniter. Always, they were prophesized to bring peace, someone who could help restore the balance, could stop the destruction.”
“But we did the same! We have followed the Urmahne,” Salindra said. “How is it the ones we chose always failed?”
Brohmin smiled at the question. “Not always. Your attempt has been but the palest replica of what used to be. You had only fragments of text to follow.”
“But—”
“I can’t explain more. Your Council possesses part of the original mahne. It is incomplete, which is probably why the Magi have never succeeded.”
“How is it that you know this?” she asked.
Brohmin did not answer.
Jakob sat stunned. Novan had asked him to read about the Magi practice, he had said it was important to understand. Had Novan known? How did Brohmin?
“What does this have to do with the Deshmahne?” Jakob asked.
“As I said, Raime once sat on this council.”
“Even if what you’re saying is true”—and it was clear to Jakob that Salindra wasn’t certain it was—“that would have been hundreds, perhaps thousands of years ago.”
Brohmin nodded. “He had been revered among the Conclave as a brilliant mind, a brilliant strategist, until he became too curious about forbidden powers. Eventually, Raime was exiled. He never forgave the Conclave for his exile. Throughout the years, he has survived, prolonging his own life by stealing from those he could.”
“Stealing?” Jakob asked.
“There are many things in this world with power,” Brohmin said.
“You mean the Magi?” Jakob asked.
Brohmin nodded, and Salindra looked aghast. “Among others. It was from these beings and creatures that Raime stole, taking their abilities, their being, that which gave them life, and took it as his own. It has kept him alive but has turned him into something no longer a man.”
The Warrior Mage (The Lost Prophecy Book 2) Page 12