Noise from above caught his attention, and he realized he needed to hurry. If he remained here, the Deshmahne would come upon him, and they might grow angry when they realized he had discovered a way down into their tunnels and toward their teralin. Every so often, he heard the far off sound of tapping—the sound of mining.
He continued onward, and when he reached the distant light, he grabbed the lantern from the wall. It was made of dark teralin and somehow glowed without burning any oil, a steady, orange light. There had been something similar in the mines beneath Vasha, though there, it had been positively charged teralin.
The farther he went, the more he noticed the increasing pressure from the mines themselves. It was a building sensation that filled him with awareness of the teralin. He’d only been in the mines one time, and he had very nearly not survived.
He reached another branch point, and the ground began to slope down in both directions. Brohmin considered for a moment, thinking about the direction of the pit. That had to connect to the mines, and he wondered if heading toward it or away from it was his best strategy. He didn’t have an answer, but the path here forced him to choose. One way led toward the temple, and likely back toward the pit at the heart of it. The other way led away from here, and as he thought about it, he realized that it likely headed north.
Brohmin chose that direction.
He wandered and began to lose track of how long he’d walked. The sounds that he’d once heard behind him were no longer, faded the farther he went. Even the steady tapping that he had heard began to fade the longer he went.
How far would the tunnel go?
A few other tunnels branched off, and at first, he’d considered exploring them, but he detected no sound coming from them as he passed, and he had no desire to wander endlessly, so he didn’t veer off. The main shaft of the tunnel drew him forward, and he hurried along it. If he encountered the Deshmahne here, he ran the risk that he would not be offered the opportunity to search for the child.
Was there anything that his connection to the ahmaean would be able to show him?
Brohmin stopped and stretched out his ahmaean, using it to focus on the teralin around him.
He waited.
At first, there was nothing.
He tried listening for his connection to the ahmaean that he had tagged the Lashiin priest with, but there was no clear sense of it.
Did the teralin somehow suppress it?
Brohmin pushed harder, drawing not only from his ahmaean but that within the temple, pulling on it with strength that he had not possessed in quite some time. He sent this connection out, and it drifted along the tunnel, guided by the uncharged teralin.
Then he found it.
The connection was there, the ahmaean faded, but present.
He had to continue along the same tunnel, but the farther he went, the more certain he became that he would reach the triggered ahmaean.
At a branch point in the tunnel, he was forced to turn.
Brohmin was thankful that he had this lantern, though it gave only enough light for him to see a few dozen steps in front of him before the edge of the light faded, shadows and darkness beyond. The air was drier here, the dampness fading the farther he went from the temple. That seemed surprising to him, but he was thankful for the change.
This tunnel narrowed, and at one point, he had to squeeze along it. Were it not for his connection to the ahmaean, he might have turned back, but drawing on the power above him, and from the ahmaean that he could use there, he knew that he needed to continue in this direction.
Then the tunnel opened again.
Brohmin paused. Did that make it more likely or less likely that he was heading in the right direction?
He moved carefully, silencing his steps as much as possible. Mostly, he used nothing more than his training, but at times, he had to draw upon his connection to the ahmaean.
The farther he went, the more he began to hear that tapping noise.
He was far away from the temple by now, and he’d surely not be able to hear the mining he knew took place there.
Then there was his connection to the ahmaean that he had placed upon the Lashiin priest. It was close now and clearer than it had been since Brohmin first lost sight of the man.
He took a deep breath and continued forward. He wished that he had the ability to shift locations as the damahne once did. Such an ability would be useful to him here and would allow him to move without being noticed.
A massive cavern opened up in front of him, reaching far below and above him. It was well lit, with dozens of the same teralin lanterns spaced throughout it.
Brohmin stared into the cavern, letting his eyes adjust.
The sound came from here. There was mining, and it took him a while to realize that it came from several locations.
The nearest was almost directly below him. Brohmin caught sight of a smallish-looking figure, barely large enough to be anything but a child.
Anger seethed within him. The Lashiin priests had forced the children to mine the teralin? What reason would they have for that? They could have mined it on their own, and likely would have managed to do so more quickly, and more effectively, than relying on the children.
He shielded his lantern, not wanting to let the light from it be too noticeable. He surveyed the cavern and realized there were a few others, their voices hushed as they huddled near one wall.
The sense of ahmaean—the tagging that he had placed upon the Lashiin priest—came from there.
Slaves? That was what the priests had done with these children?
Slavery had long been outlawed in most lands. The only place that had continued to practice it was his homeland, and even that had been abandoned now that there was a new king in Gom Aaldia.
Brohmin searched for a way down to the cavern floor. A narrow lip of stone jutted out, and he abandoned the lantern so he’d have both hands, and crept along the stone, moving carefully. He had experience climbing like this, though rarely without any sort of preparation. He hurried down, moving as quietly as he could, hoping that he made no noise, or if he did, the sound of the hammering from the children as they mined would compensate for it.
At one point, he slipped but managed to catch himself before he slipped too far. Brohmin glanced down, but it didn’t seem his slip had made them aware of his presence.
When he reached the cavern floor, he looked up and realized the lantern he’d left on the ledge above was not nearly as concealed as he had thought.
Had he made a mistake leaving it there? All it would take would be someone to glance up, and they would be able to see where he’d come down. It was a dangerous gambit that placed him at risk, but if he was successful, he could rescue these children, and then he could decide what he would do with them.
He hadn’t completely decided whether to return them to the Deshmahne. There was a reason that the Lashiin priest had chosen the children, and he was determined to discover why.
Children worked at the stone, trying to pull the metal from the enormous cavern. He counted five children, though wondered if there might be more. What had the Deshmahne said about them? He had lost his son to the Lashiin priests, and they had left him in the mines.
Anger continued to seethe within him, and this time, Brohmin recognized it.
It came from the dark ahmaean, and perhaps it came because he had used the dark teralin sword, however briefly. He knew the dangers in that, and had experienced them before, but had little choice.
Brohmin headed across the cavern, moving quietly.
When he reached the middle, lanterns moved around him.
Brohmin froze.
The sense of the ahmaean tagging was close—much too close to be accident.
He reached for his sword and prepared to unsheathe it when a dozen men rushed toward him.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Shifting back to the daneamiin city was difficult. Jakob attempted to use his connection, but it was Anda who guided t
hem, and it was her connection to the ahmaean that allowed them to reach it. Normally when he shifted, there was a sense of tugging upon his ahmaean, swirling it around him so that it would radiate out in such a way that distances became negligible. There was never a sense of movement, never anything other than the shifting.
This time when he shifted, there was pain, agony that reminded him of what he had experienced when he first was gaining his abilities. His head split, pain arcing through him, nearly overwhelming him.
Anda gripped his hand tightly, and her ahmaean swirled around him, providing him a reassurance, but there was only so much that she could do to reassure him since she could not take away his suffering, and could not alleviate the pain in his mind.
When he opened his eyes after the shifting, he realized they were in the forest, deeper than they had before, but not all the way back to the daneamiin city. A thick fog hung over the ground, and for a moment, he thought it might be ahmaean, but this was much denser than he’d never seen with ahmaean. There was a wispy, almost moist quality to it. The fog created a dampness to the air, and he breathed it in.
Had he not shifted quite far enough?
He looked to Anda, and she had an unreadable expression, though with her daneamiin features, it was often difficult for him to determine what she was thinking.
“Is this where you intended us to appear?” Jakob asked.
Anda glanced around her. The forest was enormous, and the trees rising around them had massive trunks, the leaves nearly as large as his hands put together, blocking out the sun. The air carried the same earthy odor to it that he detected elsewhere within the forest, and there was the fragrance of flowers scattered throughout mixed with a sweet rot from the fallen fruits.
All of it was familiar, but there were other parts to it that were less so.
This was a section of the forest that Jakob had never visited. He knew that the Unknown Lands were massive and that he had only experienced the barest edge of them, knowing that the daneamiin city was but a part of these lands. Despite that, he didn’t know whether there was anything else within the forest that the daneamiin intended to protect.
“I intended for us to appear near the house of the Cala maah,” Anda said.
“Where is this?”
“This is what we call the Old Forest.”
There was something about the tone with which she set it that made Jakob a little unsettled. “Why do I get the sense that the Old Forest is not particularly safe?”
“The Old Forest was here long before the daneamiin came to these lands. When my people first left the lands of men, leaving behind the mistreatment at the hands of damahne as well as men, we came to the lands across the Valley, and we settled first in the city, building structures that reminded those first people of the homes they left behind.”
“How is that related to the Old Forest?”
“There were parts of these lands that even my ancestors did not want to settle. These lands were not well explored even in the times of the damahne. They were viewed as dangerous, and wild. Few had spent any real time here, and those who did had feared it, and feared what might be found deep in the heart of these lands.”
Jakob remembered the vision he’d had when he had traveled back as Aimielen. In that vision, he had sensed the daneamiin’s fear of coming across the Valley. Fear for her grandchildren, for their safety. Had she known about the Old Forest?
But what was there to fear here? Why would the damahne fear something over here?
“Haven’t the daneamiin explored all of the Unknown Lands? Isn’t that how they chose where to build their city?”
“My people keep close to the Valley,” Anda said. “You have seen how the forest, and our home, remains close to the Valley.”
“It’s not too close,” Jakob said.
“Not too close. The forest defends us as it nears the Valley, the separation created by the damahne forcing that.”
“Wait. The damahne created the Great Valley?”
“It was forced separation,” Anda said. “The Valley had been there, and when the first daneamiin came across, visiting these lands, we were safe for a time.”
“But the first daneamiin didn’t come across the Valley.”
“Not at first. At first, the daneamiin thought to live as men and damahne did. They built homes and established cities and thought to remain a part of the world, but it was not to be.”
“What kind of homes? Where?”
“The same kind that people throughout the rest of your land built and lived in. Cities. Over time, those cities fell, and the people who built them fell with them. Over time, we lost much.”
Jakob hadn’t seen that in his visions, but there was a certain sort of sense about it. He could easily imagine how the daneamiin had cities before the damahne forcing them to abandon them, even if he had ever seen them.
“Why are you so hesitant to come into the Old Forest?”
Anda looked around her, her eyes flickering at the trees, toward the fog that hovered over everything, and finally flickering toward the darkened the sky. “This is a place of danger. It is a place that was here long before my people, long before even man. This is a place that even the damahne choose not to visit. There is something here that made my people uncomfortable.”
“But there is much ahmaean here,” Jakob said. He could feel it, but could not access it, not the way he could with other places. He couldn’t even see the ahmaean. The fog itself obscured it from him.
“Much ahmaean, but that does not keep us safe. The ahmaean is not useful if we cannot access it.”
Jakob was weakened, and wasn’t sure that he would be able to reach the ahmaean in his current state, but wanted to try.
He reached for the power swirling around the trees. It was there, in both the trunks and the branches, reminding him of what he saw deeper in the daneamiin lands. It surprised him that the daneamiin were so uncomfortable coming into this forest, especially as it seemed no different from any other place within the Unknown Lands.
Jakob reached for the ahmaean, and it didn’t respond as he expected.
How much of that was because of his fatigue? He was weakened, and strength that he normally possessed did not come to him nearly as easily as it should have.
“We have found much the same, Jakob Nialsen. When we have tried using the ahmaean of the Old Forest, there is no response for us, either. We don’t know whether these trees have always been here, born when these lands were first created, or whether they came later, but we recognize that they are powerful. We recognize that the trees themselves prefer that the daneamiin remain separate.”
“Then how did you bring us here?” Jakob asked.
Anda continued to study the trees. “I did not bring us here, Jakob Nialsen. I would not have.”
If she hadn’t, and Jakob hadn’t, another possibility was that the trees had drawn him here. Just as the city had drawn him into the vision of its destruction. But why would they?
As he often did, he thought back to his childhood hero, thinking of what Jarren Gildeun would have done when faced with such a challenge. He likely would have willingly traveled here, and would have embraced the darkness within the forest, and would have embraced the uncertainty. It was times like this that made it clear that Jakob was not at all like his childhood hero.
“Can you guide us from here?” Jakob asked.
When Anda turned away from the trees, focusing her attention back on Jakob, he realized without her needing to answer that she could not.
“It is the trees, Jakob Nialsen. There is something about the ahmaean here, something about the way that power is generated, that prevents us from being able to pierce the veil.”
“Then we’ll have to walk.”
Anda nodded, but she seemed uncomfortable with that. Being here, in this forest, made her more uncomfortable than Jakob had ever seen her, even more uncomfortable than she had been when dealing with Raime.
They started through th
e trees, with Anda guiding them, and Jakob following along. She moved in the flickering way that all daneamiin did, gliding across the forest floor, skipping steps at a time. It was something like shifting but required much less connection to the ahmaean.
Jakob was able to keep up with her, mostly because he had spent enough time with daneamiin when he had walked back along the fibers to know what it was that she did, and recognized how he could move similarly.
The Old Forest was massive and much denser than even the forest that the daneamiin considered home, which itself was much more impressive than the Great Forest, that which had long been a powerful and impressive forest in the known lands.
Anda remain silent, and there was an edge of tension, an undercurrent that flowed into her ahmaean, though she attempted to control it. Jakob pushed out with his ahmaean, seeking to soothe her, to calm the slight fluttering of the energy that swirled around her but wasn’t sure whether anything he did helped.
At one point, Anda glanced over and smiled at him. “Do not worry, Jakob Nialsen. We will get free of this forest.”
“I’m not worried about getting free of the forest. I’m worried more about you, and what you’re experiencing by being here.” Jakob didn’t fear the forest the same way that Anda did. He recognized that there was power here, and recognized that it was something old—even more ancient than other places that he’d visited—but didn’t pick up on any sort of malevolence.
“You do not need to worry about me, Jakob Nialsen. I will be well.”
She continued to lead them, heading in what he sensed was a northerly direction, though it wasn’t clear. Sensations around him were muted, and the forest itself had a different energy to it that seemed to contain him.
“How do you know which direction to travel?”
“I travel toward my people, and my city.”
“But how do you know?” Jakob asked.
She looked at him, her expression pained. “I do not.”
He squeezed her hand and stopped walking. Taking a deep breath, Jakob pressed his connection, his ahmaean, out from him once again, and sent it into the trees, hoping to detect something. Anything.
The Lost City (The Lost Prophecy Book 5) Page 29