In the distance, Carth was beginning to make out a shifting of the lights.
Could she have reached the bottom?
She moved carefully, slowly easing back on the shadows, not wanting to collect them too tightly as she descended, uncertain whether anyone was down there, and if they were, whether they would even recognize that she was approaching.
And then she saw light.
She waited, holding back so that she didn’t step too closely into the light, not wanting to reveal herself quite yet.
She listened.
When she did, she used a combination of her shadows and her flame, letting them ease away from her, just the barest amount of her magic.
There were others here. She could feel them.
Carth counted at least seven, though was no longer sure whether she could rely upon her magic and its connection to what she detected.
“How many will I encounter?” Carth asked.
Talia shook her head.
“I count seven. You don’t have to tell me if there’s more than that, just blink.”
Talia tipped her head and considered Carth for a long moment, and then she blinked.
Carth breathed out. There were more than seven.
How many could she handle on her own? Probably fewer than she had anticipated. She had anticipated Talia helping fight through whoever else might be here. Carth didn’t want to kill, which would make it more difficult to attack carefully.
Could she use her shadows the same way that she had against Linsay?
If she could, she might be able to incapacitate the others in the room before they were aware that she was here, and then she would have only those she couldn’t detect to deal with.
Carth stretched out with her shadows, pushing out slowly—ever so slowly—until she could detect the people in the room. When she did, she wrapped the shadows around them and constricted them.
Carth counted. Moments passed, and then she heard the people collapse. The connection to the shadows had worked.
She darted into the room, taking a quick survey.
Five people remained, and all were armed. They wore familiar black robes, and the fabric practically shimmered. Why were they familiar?
It took a moment to realize the reason.
The priests.
Was that why they were able to avoid her connection to the shadows and the flame so that she couldn’t even detect their presence?
She leapt forward, wrapping her shadows around them, but the connection to them dissipated, melting away from each person.
Carth sighed and jumped forward again, and again the same thing happened.
Using the shadows wouldn’t work on these men, but could there be another way that she could attack? When she attempted to use the S’al, directing the magic of the flame at them, it slipped past them. Neither of her magics would work.
One of the men reached her and slashed with a dagger.
Carth didn’t want to harm them, not if she didn’t have to.
She focused on shadow and flame, directing it in front of the nearest man. The cloak might protect him from the effect of her magic, but it shouldn’t protect him when she used magic near him.
The explosion lifted him up and carried him back.
Carth darted in, kicking the man when he hit the ground, preventing him from moving again. She directed the same attack at the others, the combination of the flame and shadows exploding in front of them, knocking them back.
She noticed movement and spun.
Talia waited in the room, staring at the fallen. “He will be angry with this,” she said.
“The Collector, or Alistan Rhain?”
Talia looked around and shook her head. “Both. I… don’t think this was wise.”
Carth began to search the people. “Perhaps not, but this way I have a chance to understand what the Collector is after.”
Most of the people who had fallen were servants. Carth was even more happy that she hadn’t used anything more than her connection to the shadows. There was no point in attacking and destroying people who had only been hired to serve in the household. She looked for Rhain but didn’t see him.
“Where is he?” she asked Talia.
“As I said, he will be angry when he returns.”
“He knew I was coming.” Carth looked up at Talia, meeting her eyes.
The other woman nodded. “He knew you were coming. How could he not?”
“What does that mean?”
“When you broke into his compound and abducted one of his people—”
“She was one of mine,” Carth said. It hurt that Linsay had betrayed her, and she shouldn’t let it bother her as much as it did, but there was nothing she could do about it. Maybe the pain would get easier in time, but Carth didn’t know whether it would. She had sacrificed for Linsay—and had done so willingly—which made the betrayal even more painful.
Carth quickly cut strips of cloth away from the men who’d attacked her, using fabric from their strange robes to bind their hands and feet. Maybe it would prevent them from escaping as well as it had prevented her from using her magic on it. She moved the others away from them, pulling them to the side of the room and arranging them so that they wouldn’t be uncomfortable when they came around.
She didn’t have to wait long for the others to start coming around.
When they did, there was confusion at first, and Carth kept a hold of her connection to the shadows to be prepared to use them if necessary. She hoped that she wouldn’t have to use them, but needed to be ready.
A young woman with pale golden hair and freckled skin awoke first. She glanced over at Carth and then at Talia, her eyes growing wider and wider. “Don’t hurt us,” the woman begged.
Talia chuckled. “Too late.”
Carth shot her a withering look. “I don’t intend to hurt you. Where is Alistan Rhain?”
The woman shook her head. “We don’t know. He doesn’t tell us where he’s going.”
“You have to have heard something.”
The woman shook her head. “Please. I’ll tell you anything, but just don’t hurt me.”
Carth sighed. It was possible that they wouldn’t know how to find Rhain, but the man couldn’t be that hard to find. He was a merchant in the city and he served on the tribunal, so there had to be some way for her to find out about where he might have gone.
“When did he leave?” she asked the woman. Two men sitting behind her started to come around, both of them clutching their heads. They wore dazed expressions and seemed to take longer than the woman to realize that Carth was there. Had she held on to the shadows too long with them?
“It was hours ago. He sent us down here and set guards.”
“Why did he send you down here?” Carth looked around the bunker. That was what it had to be, though it reminded her of the cell into which they’d placed her. The stone walls were smooth and seemed to be naturally occurring, not carved. The ceiling was uneven, as if whatever had formed the stone had taken its time. Carth thought about pushing her magic against the stone, but there seemed no point in attempting it.
“He said… he said there was someone he had sentenced who would be angry with their punishment.”
Carth glanced at Talia. The other woman only shrugged. “You could say that I was angry with my punishment,” Carth said, turning her attention back to the woman.
“Will you kill him?” The question came from a man near the back. He was slight of build and had deep brown eyes. His voice was soft and had a rasp to it.
“I don’t want to hurt him. I just want questions answered.”
“You won’t hurt him?”
“Did I hurt you?” She considered him for a moment. “Did I hurt any of you? Even the men who attacked me?” She looked over at the soldiers she’d tied up. They had started to come around, but there wasn’t any way for them to move. She had bound them tightly and had gagged their mouths.
The man looked over at the soldier
s. “If you find him, don’t harm him. The rest of us need the work. It’s not always easy to find in Keyall.”
Carth sniffed. “I will try.”
The man nodded. “He was going to be at the outpost.”
“Durand!” the woman hissed.
“Hush,” Durand said.
“No. You’re not going to silence me. He wouldn’t want her to know—”
The man who stood next to Durand shook his head. “If he didn’t want anything to happen to us, he should have remained with us.”
The woman glared at the other two, and Carth waited.
“Where is the outpost?”
Durand made a point of looking away from the woman and studied Carth. “The outpost is away from town. It’s near one of the older parts of the city.”
Carth glanced at Talia. “Were we at the outpost?”
She shrugged. “If you need to call it that.”
“What would you call it? What would others call it?”
Talia stared at her and didn’t say anything.
“How long would you expect him to be gone?” she asked.
Durand looked at the others. “Usually he’s gone for a few hours before returning. Lately, he’s been gone for longer and longer stretches of time.”
Was he working on behalf of the Collector when he disappeared for that long? Was there another reason to disappear and be gone for long stretches of time? Carth considered having Talia take her to the outpost, but something told her that she wouldn’t. Even if she did, Talia had proven herself less than reliable. Carth wouldn’t be able to trust her, even if she agreed to guide her where she wanted to go.
“Will you show me?” she asked Durand.
His gaze drifted around at the others before settling back on Carth. “I can show you.”
17
Wind whistled off the sea, carrying the salt and the smell of fish, aromas that had become more than familiar to Carth over the last few years; they had become comforting. She had grown accustomed to the steady rocking of a ship beneath her feet and the stickiness of the saltwater as it coated everything. Now that was gone.
She longed for the feeling of a ship beneath her. When all of this was done, she would find another ship and she would continue on her way, but to where? Would she return to Asador, or would she continue sailing west?
“This is the outpost,” Durand said.
Carth looked at the buildings, frowning at each of them. There were a dozen, possibly more, and all were in a state of decay. Most had collapsed roofs and many had crumbling walls, the same sort of walls that she had seen near the old temple.
This wasn’t the same as the place Talia had brought her to.
Was there a reason that Alistan Rhain had come here?
Carth thought of what she knew about him and the fact that he believed himself to be a scholar. Did he think that he could find the Elder Stone before the Collector? And if he did, what did he hope to do with it?
She knew so little about Alistan Rhain, other than he thought enough of his house staff to send them into the bunker when he thought Carth might come. Had he done that out of concern—or even affection—or was it simply because it would be easier to hide them than to replace them?
And he sought power. He had gained a place upon the tribunal, which told her that he valued the power such a position would bring. What else could she discover of him?
She glanced over at Talia, who had chosen to follow. She watched Carth with a strange expression on her face. The bruising around her eye had faded, receding into little more than a patch of yellow, making her appear almost jaundiced, but only in that part.
“Why does he come here?” she asked Talia.
“He searches for something,” Durand said.
Carth turned and considered the man. “How do you know, if no one’s ever with him?”
Durand flushed. “He talks to himself.” He shrugged. “I have served him from the moment he came to Keyall. He mutters to himself, usually under his breath, but he’s never that careful about what he says. I know that he doesn’t think that I’ll hear him, or that it will matter to me if I do, but I hear him. And when he speaks of the outpost, and of the temple, places that are important to those of us who have spent time in Keyall, I pay attention.”
Carth looked back at Talia. “You grew up in Keyall. Why isn’t this important to you?”
“She might have grown up here, but she is not from here. She came as little more than a child and she was raised in the city, but she doesn’t know it the way that many of us do.”
That was interesting. She wondered what the difference might be. Why would it matter that Talia had not been raised in the city? Durand believed that it did, and Carth had known others to share feelings like that about those they considered outsiders to their homelands, but with as much trade and movement through the port as there was in Keyall, she hadn’t expected to encounter that here.
“What is he after?” Carth asked.
“If he’s here, there can be only one thing that he’s after.”
Carth turned to Durand and wrapped shadows around herself and him, concealing them from Talia. If Talia still worked for the Collector, she wasn’t about to help him, especially as she wasn’t certain what she needed to do to protect herself from him.
“What would he be after, Durand?”
Durand looked around and seemed to notice the shadows had thickened around him. “I…”
“I don’t intend to take anything from here. I’m not interested in any of the artifacts of your people. I only want to ensure that the man known as the Collector doesn’t harm those I care about.”
His eyes narrowed and he breathed out heavily. “There is rumored to be a blessing from the gods left here.”
“What kind of blessing?”
Durand shrugged. “You would have to understand that the gods of my people are different than those in the north. They are not benevolent gods. Anything they might have left would have been given to us to help protect Keyall from the wrath of the other gods.”
“Is this item an Elder Stone?”
“You know,” Durand gasped.
Carth shook her head. “I don’t know anything, other than that there is a man searching for the Elder Stone, and now it appears that Alistan Rhain searches for it as well. I don’t know what purpose they have in mind for it, but I do know that items of power tend to draw the wrong kind of person.”
Yet, from the appearance of Alistan Rhain’s library, he might actually be a man of scholarship. If he was, Carth didn’t necessarily want to help him, but maybe he searched for the Elder Stone for a different reason than the Collector did. She had to hope that perhaps he wasn’t after it because he wanted to assume even greater power. But this was also a man who had gained a position on the tribunal in a short period of time. This was a person who had taken some measure of satisfaction in seeing that she was captured. Likely, with his knowledge, he had been the one to suggest the prison, especially if he had learned of it as a way to counter her magic, and used whatever help the Collector had given to assist with that.
“My people call it the Dohger Gift. It is likely an Elder Stone, at least from the description of it, and it once kept Keyall protected. It no longer does.”
“Why would you say that?”
“If the gift still provided protection, we would have never suffered from the recent attacks. There was a time when Keyall remained peaceful, and this despite the fact that many traveled through our lands. We have known incredible peace, and it has been lasting, a way for us to thrive.”
“Do you think that Alistan Rhain discovered some way of finding the Elder Stone?”
“I don’t know. Even if he searched, there is a limit to who would be allowed to find it.”
“Why?”
“The gift was given to my people, and it was meant for my people, so I don’t believe that he would be able to find it, and if he did, I doubt that he would be allowed to use it.”
&
nbsp; “What would you do if he did find it?”
“If he found it, I would have to ensure that he was not able to do anything with it.”
“And how would you intend to do that?”
He breathed out heavily, releasing a long sigh. “If necessary, I would destroy it.”
“Even if it meant that your people wouldn’t have it?”
“My people don’t have it now, so there would be nothing different in that.”
Carth looked around the outpost, considering each of the buildings. These would have been made a long time ago—much like the temple that Talia had brought her to. Whoever had constructed these buildings had been able to use the stone here, something that Carth and her magic was not even able to move. Maybe that was the secret. Maybe whatever power the Elder Stone granted had been used to create this place.
“What kind of man is he?” When Durand stared at her, a deep frown on his face, Carth pressed forward. “What kind of man is Alistan Rhain?”
“He came to Keyall and was seeking to consolidate wealth. Many merchants have done the same thing over the years, but he was certainly more effective at it. He brought with him knowledge of the market that few other merchants have ever had.”
“And that’s how he was able to gather wealth and power?” Carth asked.
“Partly. Although there is likely more to it.”
“Why does he have all of the books?”
Durand smiled. “He enjoys reading. If he weren’t focused on trying to gather power and wealth, he might be welcome. He’s certainly not cruel, at least not to those of us who work for him, but there are times when he focuses on the wrong thing.”
Carth found herself liking Durand and his honesty. It was helpful that he knew Alistan Rhain, and that he was able to provide an opinion of the man, because the one she had was less than favorable—but hers had been formed during a difficult time. She had been captured and faced the tribunal, but what would he have been like had she met him under different circumstances? What would he have been like had he not been forced to serve the Collector?
Shadow Games (The Collector Chronicles Book 2) Page 12