He needed to do more than simply detect something about the trees, he needed to get a sense of direction, and he wasn’t certain whether the trees would allow that.
The forest felt alive in a way that even the daneamiin forest did not.
Jakob wasn’t sure why he felt that way, but it was something he did feel with certainty. It came not only from the trees and the massive branches sprawling overhead but from everything around him.
As he breathed in, he was aware of how the steady haze, the thick fog that he’d seen when they first appeared in the Old Forest, was much more than a simple fog. It hung over everything, and he realized that was what fueled the forest, what gave it strength.
It was ahmaean.
All of it was ahmaean, but unlike any other ahmaean Jakob had ever seen or experienced. With that understanding, could he reach the ahmaean? Was he meant to?
Often he acted impulsively, not thinking through what he had seen, or learned. He still didn’t know whether there were consequences to what he had done when facing Raime in the old daneamiin city. Had he changed something? Anda seemed convinced that it was not possible, and Aruhn made the same sort of claim, but it was difficult for him to believe that his actions had no consequences. Stepping back along the fibers had to have changed something, even if it was unintentional.
But none of that helped him understand how he and Anda had come to be in the Old Forest. If he hadn’t shifted here, and if Anda hadn’t shifted him here, something had brought him.
If so, maybe he was meant to use this power.
The ahmaean here was ancient and powerful. It had to be for it to thicken in the way that it did.
Jakob looked around him and breathed in once more. As he did, ahmaean swirled into his lungs, filling him.
There was a strangeness about it, but there was also something else. Something familiar.
Use it.
The voice came from deep in his mind, and he recognized the source.
Nemerahl?
Use it.
Could he have reconnected to the nemerahl? The creature had followed him, had been with him for much longer than Jakob realized. It had been trailing him when they were leaving Chrysia and had helped him when the Deshmahne had attacked, and then had followed him into the Unknown Lands, watching him through the forest before coming back across the Valley to track him once more.
After what the daneamiin had said, and what he had seen in his vision, he had assumed that the nemerahl sought him to bond. What if that wasn’t the case at all? What if the nemerahl had already been bonded?
You were Alyta’s bonded, weren’t you?
I was. Now I am alone.
But you’ve been following me since long before Alyta’s capture.
I’ve been following you because you showed potential. She saw it, and she asked that I observe.
Did you bring me to the Old Forest?
I helped guide you here. You continue to ignore the signs.
I’m trying to understand what it means to be damahne.
I see that. You continue to try and fail.
The comment felt like a slap, and Jakob wanted to recoil, but the nemerahl wasn’t wrong. He did continue to try, and he did continue to fail. As much as he wanted to succeed, and as much as he wanted to do what was needed to serve as damahne, the fact of the matter was that he still didn’t know what that meant. He didn’t know what that entailed.
I asked for you to guide me.
Guide you? I am not your bonded.
He was not, but could there be another?
Is that why you brought me here? Jakob asked.
It is time for you to stop fumbling along the way. I can show you some things, but I am not damahne, and I am not your bonded. Much of what you need to learn you will have to discover on your own.
Why bring me here then?
If I had not, I have seen that you would slip into danger.
You can see along the fibers?
As could you if you were not so foolish.
I tried. I went to one of the Magi —
The Magi do not have the same ability with looking forward along the fibers as the damahne or the nemerahl.
How can I look forward?
Use it.
There was urgency in what he suggested, and Jakob realized that he was still holding the ahmaean that he had breathed in, and that came from the forest itself.
It filled him, granting him a connection to power that he hadn’t been aware of before. With the ahmaean floating throughout him, he could practically see the fibers. They blazed within his mind, and whether it was from the head-splitting pain that had occurred when he’d been dragged here, or whether it was simply because of the ahmaean he could draw upon in these lands, he didn’t know.
Jakob turned the ahmaean inward and reached forward.
Fibers radiated out from him, hundreds of possibilities.
For the first time, he understood what he needed to do.
He searched the possibilities.
There wasn’t anything clear in doing this, it was merely searching for commonalities, for trends that occurred along various strands that reached out from him. Each one represented a different choice, and from each strand, others branched, spreading out something like trees.
Jakob frowned. Was that what the nemerahl had wanted him to see? Did the creature want him to see that the fibers of time branched off much like the massive trees rising from the ground? There was a single trunk, and then branches that fed off, with more branches off of each one. Each trunk was enormous, and they fed into the ground, where the roots entwined together, creating something like the fibers of time.
What was there for him to see? What was there for the nemerahl to show him?
Flashes of images came to him, some of them clear. He saw Raime in many of them and realized that he was right in fearing for the daneamiin safety. Raime had discovered the connection to the land, and if Jakob wasn’t careful, he would use it and would use the power the daneamiin had left within the pool to make his own strength much greater.
In some of the visions, Jakob managed to stop him. In others, he failed.
In all, he tried.
That was what he had to do next.
But there was another vision, flashes of something else that surprised him.
Brohmin.
Was there anything he could do to help his friend?
Those images were closer, nearer along the branch, which made him wonder whether there was an even greater need to help Brohmin than to face Raime.
Couldn’t he do both?
Jakob pulled on more ahmaean, borrowing from the forest, and he shifted.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Brohmin wasn’t prepared to fight a dozen men. He could face several, and had fought upwards of five or six at one time, and had risked himself with nearly as many Deshmahne, but those had been when he had more control over his ahmaean.
“I’m only here for the children,” Brohmin said.
A face shrouded in shadows appeared, and his eye caught the soft glint of the lantern off the man’s teralin ring, marking him as one of the Lashiin priests. From his connection to the ahmaean, Brohmin realized this was the same man he had rescued.
“I already told you that I’m bringing the children to safety.”
Brohmin looked around before his gaze settled back on the Lashiin priest. “It seems to me that you’re using the children, not bringing them to safety. I should have left you to die in the street.”
The man laughed, and it was a dark sound that bounced off the walls of the cavern. Brohmin was suddenly aware that the children had stopped hammering.
“You think to rescue them from me?” the Lashiin priest asked. “We have brought them away from the horrors that they were experiencing. This is their penance, their way of earning their redemption.”
“I saw what you did. I was there when you stole that child away from the school. That’s not a rescue. That’s an abduction.
Most of these children aren’t old enough to have the need to earn redemption.”
The man chuckled. “How little you know. These children have all begun the transition and descent into the darkness of the Deshmahne. To return from the darkness, they need to climb into the light. All we are asking is for them to demonstrate a willingness, and an ability, to do so.”
Brohmin used his connection to the ahmaean, probing each of these Lashiin priests for a connection. If they possessed their own ability with ahmaean, it would make them more formidable. He doubted that he would escape from twelve, but if he could coordinate the attack in such a way, disable several of them before they were prepared for him, he might succeed.
He still didn’t like his odds of success.
Somewhere, distantly, he heard a whimper.
The child’s cry pulled on him, tugging at his heart. The sound was so much like Joshua.
Why was it that he could have gone years—decades—without thinking so much about Joshua, only now to have thoughts of his lost son consume him?
Was it simply that he was nearing the end of his life, or was there another reason?
“If you’re only trying to offer them a chance for redemption, the children needn’t suffer like that.”
“Suffer? What makes you believe that they suffer? They have a place to stay, and they’re watched over, and we make sure to provide enough food and water.”
The dark anger within Brohmin continued to rise, and he no longer fought it. He might need that darkness to defeat these Lashiin priests. Drawing on the power of the dark ahmaean would surely taint him—but it was possible that it was necessary.
“You’re treating them like animals,” Brohmin said.
The Lashiin priest stood in front of him, his arms crossed over his chest, his gaze flickering around at the others near him. “What else would the Deshmahne be but animals?”
He took a step toward Brohmin, and Brohmin made a point of keeping his hand near the hilt of his sword. He would have to unsheathe quickly and react in a way that he’d not needed to since facing the groeliin.
Had he lost some of his edge? Had his injury—and defeat at Raime’s hand—changed him so much? He had not thought so, but the longer he went, the more he realized that something about him had changed.
“These are children. They are not animals. And you work against the ideals of the Urmahne with what you do.”
“What do you know about the Urmahne ideals? You have come to these lands, demonstrating power, but flashing darkness on your arms. What do you even know?”
“I have faced more than you can ever imagine for longer than you can ever imagine,” Brohmin said.
The Lashiin priest breathed out. “Enough!”
That was all that Brohmin needed.
He ducked his head, unsheathing in a fluid motion. Anger at what he suspected these men had done to the children boiled within him, and he pulled on that, letting it fill him. He had known this type of anger only a few times before.
The first had been when he’d lost his son. He had required the help of the damahne, and those who served the Conclave, to help him through it. The other time had been when he had used the dark teralin swords, facing the Deshmahne with their own weapons. It was when he was still learning about the Deshmahne, still discovering the depth of the darkness within them, and trying to understand what exactly they might intend.
And now again, he was filled with anger, but this seemed different. This was a righteous anger, and he wasn’t completely tainted by the teralin because he could still reach his ahmaean, and knew that it was not darkened, not as it would be were he to have succumbed to the negatively charged teralin.
Brohmin swung his sword, but the Lashiin priest countered, blocking him.
Three others closed in, and he detected the rest and was not surprised to learn that they each carried a teralin sword. The blades were uncharged, neutral.
His was not.
Brohmin pressed his ahmaean through it, using it as a focus of power, and radiated that energy away from him.
It created a slowing, enough that he had an advantage, and cut down two of the Lashiin priests.
Two more took their place, and the primary priest, the man who had started it all for him, who had guided him here to Paliis and the Deshmahne temple, closed in from behind him.
Brohmin twisted, deflecting his blow, managing to turn his sword down.
The man was skilled.
Brohmin wouldn’t have expected that, not after seeing him fighting with his knives on the street, but with the sword, he was fluid and flowed through various catahs. They were movements that he recognized, though none were particularly advanced, nothing like Selton had demonstrated when he had faced him in the city above.
Were he not facing as many men as he was, Brohmin wouldn’t have struggled nearly as much, but he was forced to react to three, and then four, and then five swords, each one skilled enough to nearly cut him.
And then, he was cut.
He didn’t see whose sword caught his arm, only that one of the blades managed to strike him.
Brohmin attempted to twist backward, but two men were there, forcing him back into the middle. They were coordinated, their attacks designed to force him one way, and then spinning and dancing, in a way the Deshmahne rarely had managed.
They didn’t need to be incredibly skilled swordsmen to defeat him, not when they had numbers, not when they acted in concert like this.
Brohmin wrapped the ahmaean around him, drawing strength from it.
He didn’t know whether this was his own ahmaean, or whether he pulled upon the dark ahmaean from the temple, perhaps even from the walls around him. Power filled him, and strength came with it.
A steely resolve filled him.
He might not survive, but he would see as many of these men defeated as possible. He would see the children saved. That was what he had agreed to do. It was the only way he would get Salindra to safety.
Brohmin danced in a quick arc, swinging his sword around, and managed to strike one man on the thigh, and the next on his arm, in one strike. He continued the motion, falling into long-remembered catahs, bringing his sword around in controlled motions.
Something struck him from behind, and Brohmin resisted the urge to lunge forward, away from it. He remained fixed in his catah, continuing the sweeping movement.
Another attack caught him on his flank, and Brohmin pulled on his ahmaean, solidifying it around him.
Using ahmaean in this way would stanch any bleeding, but it also depleted his overall strength.
He was caught again, this time in his shoulder.
He had faced the groeliin, and had survived the surge of the massive horde making their way south, only to fall at the hands of barely adequate swordsmen?
It seemed a bitter irony to him.
His sword arm no longer moved as it should, and he shifted to the other and found that it was equally weakened.
His vision was blurred. Had he been struck on the head? Was it blood or sweat that dripped into his eyes?
The connection to the ahmaean faded even more, and he reached for it, trying to draw what he could, not caring whether it was his or whether it was the dark ahmaean he had noticed up in the temple.
He had a momentary surge of power, enough that he sent it through himself, trying to seal off his injuries, needing long enough to fend off these Lashiin priests. There had to be a limit to how many there were. There had to be some way that he could defeat them.
But there was not. There were too many.
Something struck his foot, and he stumbled, falling to the ground.
He swung his sword around, blocking a killing blow, but knew that he couldn’t block many more. Now that he was on the ground, he would not last long.
Then movement stopped.
“Brohmin.”
He heard his name but didn’t recognize the voice. It was deep, almost musical, though there was a sense of familiarity to it.
He tried to look around but saw nothing. He shifted his sword, swinging, but it struck only air.
The battle had stopped. There was no sound around him.
Had he defeated all the Lashiin priests?
He didn’t think so. There had been too many, and even when he’d fallen, he had still been under attack. There was no way that he had managed to fend them off, stop them.
“Brohmin,” the voice said again.
He wiped his arm across his face, clearing his vision. He glanced at his sleeve and saw that it was wet, but not darkened. Was it only sweat? Had he not been injured any more than that?
It seemed impossible to believe that he hadn’t been cut across the scalp, that he wasn’t bleeding, but his pains were elsewhere in his body, not along his head.
Hands lifted him almost gently and moved him. He looked up and saw a face that seemed impossible to believe was real.
“Jakob?”
“Relax for now, Brohmin. I’ll do what I can to heal you, but I’m limited in what I know.”
“How is it that you’re here? How is it that you were able to reach me? You were in the Great Forest the last anyone saw you.”
“It appears that my kind has the ability to travel great distances.”
“I know that. But how are you here?”
Jakob laughed. The musical nature to his voice was more evident when he did. Had he always had that quality to his voice, or had that changed as he had come into his damahne powers? Brohmin didn’t think that he had the typical damahne voice, but maybe he had overlooked it—particularly as he had not expected it from him.
“I am here because I saw that I needed to be. I wasn’t certain, but as the time came closer, it became increasingly clear.”
“You... you can walk the fibers.”
That was almost the hardest of all to believe. Even among the damahne that he’d known, there hadn’t been many who could walk the fibers with much control. Jakob’s visions should have provided the clue that he would have that ability, but Brohmin hadn’t seen the visions in the way that he should have.
The Lost City (The Lost Prophecy Book 5) Page 30