“We think so. We don’t know with any certainty, but we believe that is how they gain their strength,” Nahrsin said.
“What would happen if the groeliin fed on creative teralin? The positive kind?”
Jassan and Nahrsin glanced at each other, but neither man appeared to know the answer.
“Something more that we need to study. I think it’s time for us to return to Farsea,” Isandra said.
Nahrsin frowned at her. “You would return to Farsea rather than to your home?”
A strange realization came to her. She could return to Vasha. There was reason for her to do so, especially now that she had captured Jostephon, but there was even more reason for her to remain. She might have lost her abilities, but she still had her mind, and she had become something other than a Mage. It was strange that it took her so long to have done so.
Isandra glanced to Jassan. “I think that I need to remain in the Antrilii lands. There is much I can still learn. There is much I can still do here.”
“And what of your Mage and the other Deshmahne?” Nahrsin asked.
Isandra allowed herself a dark smile. “The Magi could not hold him. He told me that already. I have a feeling the Antrilii will do a better job containing him, and discovering what the High Priest planned here. And if the Antrilii aren’t successful, then the merahl will no doubt have something to say about it.”
Nahrsin laughed again. “Now I really like her.”
The Antrilii leader grabbed the infant groeliin and carried it from the cave. The other Antrilii followed him, leaving Isandra and Jassan standing there. They were left alone for only a few moments before other Antrilii entered, coming for their fallen warriors, as well as the merahl.
“Are you certain you wish to remain in these lands?”
She glanced at the deformed bodies of the groeliin, and looked to the Antrilii carrying their fallen from the cave, before finally looking to Jassan. He had a hardness to him, but there was something more. He was strong, and he had treated her with kindness. He had a purpose about him, something that she had been missing, even when she had been in Vasha.
“I think I am meant to remain in these lands,” she said. “I think I have always been meant to come to these lands.”
Jassan smiled. “Perhaps you have, Isandra. It would be the gods’ will.”
They made their way out of the cave and into the growing darkness.
She had survived. This journey—all the fighting that she had seen and experienced—should have killed her, but she had survived. And she had learned that there was much more about the world than she had ever imagined. There was darkness, but there was much good, and she wanted to be a part of removing some of the darkness, and understanding more about the Antrilii, and the purpose they served.
When they reached Jostephon, the merahl howled. Isandra heard something of eagerness in the call, and almost a welcoming sense.
She patted him on the head. “If he attempts to escape, tear him apart.”
The merahl howled again, and Jostephon winced.
Jassan chuckled. “I think you will do well returning to Farsea.”
“I don’t know that I can return to Vasha. I think I might have changed too much.”
“Does that disappoint you?”
She looked up at him and smiled. “Not anymore.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Brohmin stood on the other side of the table, not willing to sit, not until he understood what was taking place here. The other two men that he had defeated had both been Magi, both of them with Roelle’s small band of soldiers. He hadn’t recognized them, but once he was done fighting, he was better able to see them, and their Magi features became clearer.
Selton sat, his sword pointed toward the Lashiin priest, a dark expression on his face.
“How is it that you came to work with the Lashiin priests?” Brohmin asked.
“How is it that you came to fight against them?” Selton asked him.
“I didn’t, not at first. They claimed they were rescuing children, and I thought that I would come and see if there was any way that I could help.”
Selton glanced from the priest and then back to Brohmin. “I was told the same.”
Brohmin grunted. “And they revealed that they were using the children?”
“No. They told me only that they were bringing out children abused by the Deshmahne, and had transportation arranged for them so that they could reach the north.”
Brohmin snorted. “Where is the child?” he asked, staring at the Lashiin priest.
The priest’s demeanor had changed as soon as he realized that Brohmin and Selton knew each other. He had obviously expected that Brohmin would be defeated, that the Magi would overwhelm him. Selton was a skilled swordsman, but he was not as skilled as Roelle, and not as skilled as Brohmin. He’d had centuries of practice and experience, more than enough time to learn techniques that the Magi had long forgotten.
“What does it matter where the child is?” the man said.
“It matters,” Brohmin said. He stood in front of the man, his arms crossed over his chest, rage burning within him. He had released the illusion of the markings on his arms, preserving his remaining ahmaean.
“You won’t find him. We have taken him, along with others, where they can serve the Urmahne while paying penance for their Deshmahne crimes.”
“Crimes? They’re children. They have no crimes.”
“Should we really have this discussion again?” the priest asked.
Brohmin closed his eyes, focusing on what he could detect of the ahmaean, and traced it. When he had gone with the Deshmahne, he had detected it heading out of the city, and heading up toward where they had found the manor house. It was no longer there. Instead, it had retreated, heading back to the city, as if it had followed them.
Unless there was another answer.
Could it be that the Lashiin priest had another way into the city?
Brohmin started pacing, trying to think through what he knew.
The priests had an understanding of teralin, enough that they could form their rings. They could deflect ahmaean, though that might be the use of the teralin as much as anything. And the sensation of the other Lashiin priest, the one upon whom he had placed a marking of ahmaean, was faded, but below him, wasn’t it?
Could that be the answer? Could the other Lashiin priest have taken the child below ground?
When he’d been in the temple, he had seen the pit that led deep into the ground and had known that the Deshmahne had some way of mining the teralin. Could that be what this was all about?
How would he get beneath the earth?
He turned his attention to the Lashiin priest, but doubted the man would share with him how they reached the mines beneath Paliis. Even if he did, there was always the risk that he would betray Brohmin, and do so in a way that would place him in greater danger.
Brohmin turned his attention back to Selton. “Where’s Roelle?”
“She still hasn’t regained her strength. After Jakob had healed her, we traveled south, heading to oppose the Deshmahne at his request.”
Brohmin blinked in surprise. “Jakob healed Roelle? Where did you find him?”
“The Great Forest. He was at the heart of the Great Forest. He… has changed. I don’t claim to know him nearly as well as Roelle did, but he has changed and has grown more powerful. The historian was with him, and was guiding him.”
Brohmin smiled to himself. Novan had found Jakob. If nothing else, he felt relieved by that. The historian was unmatched in his wisdom. It was something that even Brohmin in all his years could not compete with. Novan had the ability of reading and seeing something once, and remembering it, able to synthesize it so that he could use that knowledge later. He had been an enormous asset when the Conclave had finally pulled him in.
“I have many questions we’ll need to discuss, but we need to find this child.”
“What happens if we do not?” Selton asked
.
“Then someone I care about will be harmed by the Deshmahne. She’s already suffered because of them.”
The priest sneered at him. “Why help the Deshmahne if you’ve already suffered because of them?”
“How does helping a child help the Deshmahne?” Brohmin asked. “How does hurting a child hurt the Deshmahne?”
The priest met Brohmin’s gaze with his own dark eyes. “The same way that harming my child harmed me.”
Brohmin sighed. It all began to make sense. The priest had lost someone close to him, so he had acted in a way that would possibly get back at the Deshmahne, a way that would allow him to attempt to harm them, much as the priest felt harmed himself.
“It won’t work,” Brohmin said.
“What won’t work?”
“You’ll never feel better trying to get vengeance for the loss of someone you care for,” Brohmin said.
“What do you know? You’re willing to help the Deshmahne, which means that you have never suffered as I have suffered.”
“I have suffered. All men suffer. That is the nature of humanity.”
The priest glared at him, but Brohmin ignored it. “I lost my son many years ago. For a long time, I thought that I should have the same anger that you have. Others showed me differently. Because of them, I managed to find a sense of forgiveness, a balance, and that is what the gods demand.” It still hurt, but less than it once had.
Selton watched Brohmin carefully. The priest said nothing, but Brohmin didn’t expect him to. And maybe it didn’t matter. What mattered now was the task at hand and the knowledge that he did what he knew to be right, and what he knew to be necessary.
“What do you intend?” Selton asked.
Brohmin turned to the young Mage, focusing on him for a moment. “I intend to find this child,” Brohmin told Selton. “Doing so might be dangerous.”
“If it lets us oppose the Deshmahne, then you have my support,” Selton said.
Brohmin shook his head. “Finding the child is what the Deshmahne have asked of me.”
“The Deshmahne? I know you have experienced what they did in the north. Why would you be willing to help them?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do. For me. You need to find the rest of these Lashiin priests. That is how you can help. They’re misguided, and that will only get others hurt.”
“What will you do?”
Brohmin knew that what he needed to do would take him into the heart of the Deshmahne, the place from which he had essentially escaped. But Salindra had not, not yet.
“I intend to complete the task they’ve asked of me.”
Brohmin turned to the door and left Selton alone. Back out in the street, he looked up, and couldn’t help but see the massive Deshmahne temple rising toward the sky. The dark stone glittered in the bright daylight. Power surged out from it, and though he couldn’t see the dark ahmaean around it, he could feel it. Others in the city were likely aware of it, much like they were aware of the power of the Tower of the Gods in Thealon.
Surprisingly, despite the dark ahmaean that had to come from the temple, the people of the city were not negatively affected. Most seemed genuinely happy. It wasn’t what he had expected. Other places where the Deshmahne had come through, places like Rondalin, had been changed by their presence. Then again, those places had been under the influence of Raime. And Raime had been ignoring the south, thinking these lands secured, unprepared for whatever else he had planned.
Could Raime’s absence have left a void that he could take advantage of? Did his absence make it so that the Deshmahne shifted their focus?
Brohmin made his way along the streets, heading toward the temple. If nothing else, he would finish the task.
When he reached the temple, he stood in front of it, marveling at the sheer enormity of the structure. He couldn’t help but feel awed by what the Deshmahne had created. Not everything they did was about destruction. Their temple was about creation. Not all of their beliefs were about destroying. Many were about demonstrating strength, showing the gods why they should be exalted.
The doors opened, as if the Deshmahne had expected him.
Brohmin went forward, uncertain, but prepared for what would come. He didn’t know how the Deshmahne would react about him returning without the child, and without the two priests that had been sent as his escorts. He didn’t know if he would be attacked, and if he would be forced to defend himself. He wasn’t prepared to do so and had no desire to fight his way through the temple until he reached the massive pit. He wasn’t certain that he had the strength to do that, anyway. Facing the Magi had taken much of his ahmaean.
He kept his sword sheathed as he started inside, and was greeted by two Deshmahne, both watching him with a dark skepticism. He had not seen either when he had been here before.
He was guided deeper into the temple and didn’t recognize where they took him. When he had awoken in his cell and been taken to the pit, he had gone through a different hallway than this, and when he’d left to find the child, they had taken him out a different door.
He was led into a massive room that rose high overhead, with a shaft of light shining through the center. That light glittered off the stone, catching that flecks of darkness within, shimmering all the way down.
Not shimmering. That wasn’t what he saw. What he saw was something else, something that he had never been aware of before.
Dark ahmaean.
He had felt dark ahmaean before, but had never seen it, had only heard it described, mostly by Jakob, and by Alyta. Seeing it himself, seeing firsthand the power of the Deshmahne, he felt awed.
The two Deshmahne left him there, and he stood alone, faced with the power of the dark priests.
What had changed for him that he could now see the dark ahmaean?
Something had to have changed. He shouldn’t simply be able to see it.
Brohmin lost track of how long he stood there, left by the Deshmahne to simply contemplate in their temple.
He couldn’t deny the power that he saw here. There was the sense of something greater. Brohmin was not a religious person, years spent serving the damahne and understanding how they were not the gods that people believed them to be, had taken away that sense of the religion he’d been born into. Yet he recognized and understood that there was something more, and something greater in the world.
There was a higher power that had created everything, a being the damahne called the Maker. It was possible the damahne had been as misguided as mankind had been about the purpose of the gods, but Brohmin preferred to believe they were not, and that their belief in the Maker was well-founded.
Surprisingly, standing inside the temple, and seeing the light streaming from above, glittering along the dark stone and through walls, Brohmin could practically feel that presence.
Didn’t the Maker create both light and dark? Could there be one without the other?
Brohmin had seen some of the damahne religious artifacts and remembered a circle vividly that reminded him of the Lashiin priest’s ring. It was the shape of Lashiin, the shape that they had used to signify how there was no beginning and no end.
He pulled the ring from his pocket and held it up. It glittered in much the same way, silver and dark metal, both polarities.
A balance.
He focused on his ahmaean and breathed in.
As he did, some of the dark ahmaean breathed in with him.
How was that possible?
He had been gifted by the damahne, and his ahmaean was theirs. He should not be able to use the dark ahmaean.
He breathed in again, drawing upon the ahmaean.
It wasn’t that he was using dark ahmaean at all. What he was using was the ahmaean borrowed—stolen—by the Deshmahne.
That power wasn’t inherently dark. That power was tainted by the dark teralin, but it was not completely corrupted. He could still use it, and he wondered if he could use it to grant himself additional power.
&nbs
p; Brohmin focused on his ahmaean and pulled, wrapping it around himself, and as he did the power from the ahmaean within the temple filled him.
He gasped. He had strength that he hadn’t had in weeks. Ever since he’d faced Raime.
What was more, he felt an understanding and recognized that he could detect the teralin in the walls, as well as beneath him.
Brohmin knew how to find the tunnels.
There was an entrance here.
Had the Deshmahne intended for him to find that?
It seemed impossible to believe, but what other explanation was there?
Chapter Thirty-Five
The door led to a flight of stairs that went down into darkness. The air was damp and had a dankness to it that was difficult for Brohmin to ignore. There were no lights in the stairwell, so he went by a sense of feel and the little light that came from above.
Brohmin used the connection to his ahmaean and sensed a faint connection to what he had detected above him with the dark ahmaean, granting him additional strength. It troubled him that he could have such awareness of it, but didn’t think that he’d been corrupted.
Then again, how many of the Deshmahne believed that they had been corrupted?
He had been exposed to the effects of dark teralin before, having used the Deshmahne sword to fend off an attack. With that, he knew how difficult it could be to resist the pressure from it and to resist in a way that it gradually darkened the person who carried it.
Teralin flowed through these walls. He was aware its presence and could feel it pressing against him with its steady warmth. There was no color to it, not until it was charged, and he did not have that ability.
The stairs ended, and he stepped out into a long tunnel.
In the distance, he caught sight of a hint of light, barely a flickering. Was that where he was expected to go?
His body ached, and were it not for the need to find this child, and to somehow make the exchange for Salindra, he thought that he might simply rest. It was harder to recover from fighting these days, and his body didn’t handle the insult nearly as well as it once had.
The Lost City (The Lost Prophecy Book 5) Page 28