“Did you read about that in your studies?” Carth asked.
“You can learn anything from enough study,” he said.
“Anything?”
He shrugged again. “Some would think that you can only learn through force”—he cocked his head as he looked at her, and Carth could tell that he was accusing her of that—“but I have the opinion that learning and scholarship are the only way to truly understand.”
“What would you do if you found it?”
“It?” Alistan asked.
“The Elder Stone. What would you do if you came across it?”
“Such an artifact would be studied. There would be value in it.”
“You don’t seek it for power?”
He frowned at her. “Power? Why would I search for that reason? I have power.”
“This would be a different sort of power,” Carth said.
“Perhaps to you, but to me, there is power in wealth and the accumulation of it. I have gained the power that I sought coming to Keyall, a place where, in time, I can consolidate trade and see to it that all the merchants coming through the city report to me. Is that not power?”
“And that’s all you’re after?”
“It was, until you arrived.”
Carth grunted. “The ships were suffering. Merchants don’t need to be attacked simply because you intend to claim their trade.”
“Suffering? That’s not it at all. I wasn’t trying to attack them, I was—” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. You’ve lost your ship, and you’ve lost any way that you could influence my trade.”
“You don’t seem to mind what happened to my ship.”
“You would blame me for the unfortunate events that took place?”
“If you were responsible, I would blame you for burning down my ship.”
Alistan leaned against the wall and studied her for a moment. “What have I gained by trapping you here, Carthenne Rel? I would rather have you depart the city and leave me here. I don’t need you and your ship to continue intervening in my activity.”
Perhaps he was telling the truth. Carth wasn’t certain if he was, or if maybe he only wanted her to think that he had.
“Do you play the game Tsatsun?” she asked.
He frowned at her. “It’s an ancient game that is designed to foster strategy. I don’t have the knack for it, I’m afraid.”
“For strategy or for the game?”
He frowned. “The latter. I would like to think that I have a reasonable skill with strategy.”
“And the Collector—what is your relationship with him?”
“You keep speaking of this person, but what if he is little more than a myth? I’ve seen no evidence of him other than rumors. Trade was restricted, that is true, but perhaps it isn’t quite what you would like me to believe.” He studied her. “From what I hear now that trade has resumed, it was nothing more than a merchant guild dispute. There is no evidence of this person you claim. I’m afraid the Collector is nothing more than a story.”
“He is not a story. He is real.”
“You’ve seen him?”
“Not seen him, but I’ve seen the effects of what he does.”
Alistan chuckled. The sound faded quickly in the darkness. “The effects of what he’s done? I thought you would be beyond such myths,” he said.
“Not if they make sense.” She looked around the temple and frowned slightly. “Why here? What do you think to find in this location?”
“It is of no importance to you,” he said.
“No? If there is anything that I can discover that will help me destroy the Collector, I intend to do so.”
“Not only do you believe this person exists, you think that you need to destroy them?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“One of the people I came to Keyall with was recently murdered.”
Alistan’s eyes widened. “Have you reported it to the constables?”
Carth laughed darkly. “To the constables? What you think they can do if I were to report the death of my friend to them? Do you think they would even care?”
“That is their responsibility. They would care—”
Carth looked away from Alistan, struggling with what she could see, if anything. The loss of Boiyn weighed heavily on her, and she needed to find Jenna and Alayna but didn’t know how to do even that. It was likely that the Collector had taken them when he had rescued Linsay.
“It doesn’t matter. Not anymore.”
“If you believe that, then you don’t understand the founding principles of Keyall.”
“And what are those?” Carth asked.
“Keyall was founded as a place for order out of chaos. The constables want nothing more than to enforce that order, though sometimes they take it to an extreme.”
“So I’ve seen,” Carth said.
Alistan shrugged. “Yes. I believe you are familiar with it. Because it’s different than what you know doesn’t make it wrong.”
“Wrong and right don’t have borders. Just because your people believe a thing doesn’t mean it is right.”
“Now they are my people?”
“No. I guess they’re not. Yet you serve on the tribunal.”
“Only to give a more measured response. If I had not, another would have taken my place, and it’s possible that they would be less inclined to keep an open mind.”
“You want me to believe that you serve on the tribunal for some altruistic purpose?”
Alistan shrugged and tapped on the rock with what appeared to be a small pick. As he tapped, traces of the rock peeled away. Was it possible that she could use something like that to penetrate it?
She pushed on her connection to shadows, trying to penetrate the area that he had damaged, but there was no effect. She tried the same thing with her connection to fire magic, but again, it failed.
“You won’t be able to influence the stone. That is something that the ancients believed was their gift from the gods.”
“And what of you? What do you believe?”
“I believe that there is power in Keyall, though I don’t claim to understand it. I believe that the oldest people of the city tap into that power, though they don’t fully understand it. And I believe that there is something—an item of power or something along those lines—that exists somewhere in the city.”
“And you intend to find it?”
“I intend to find it.”
“Why?”
“Why? If even half of the rumors about you are true, it surprises me that you would find the need to question why I and those of the city fear power influencing us.”
“They are,” Carth said.
“What?”
She shrugged. “More than half of the rumors. They’re true. I can’t say that they all are true, though maybe the ones you heard are.”
He gaped at her, a wide grin on his face. “There is one about you taking on an entire squadron of sellswords yourself. If that was true, it would be quite impressive.”
“I don’t know if it would be considered a squadron of sellswords, but there were probably a dozen. I didn’t necessarily take them on myself. I had help, as I do in many things.”
“Even with help, such a thing would be quite impressive.”
“What would you do if you found this Elder Stone?”
“I’ve told you.”
“No. You’ve told me that you value knowledge as well as wealth. I don’t know which drives you more than the other. If it’s wealth that you seek, finding an Elder Stone—if they’re even real—would give you access to incredible wealth. If it’s knowledge that you seek, and if you truly want to serve Keyall, then…”
He frowned as he studied her. “Then what?”
Carth shrugged. “Then I would be tempted to help.”
Alistan studied her for a long moment. “You mean it, don’t you?”
“I mean it. If you can help me find my friends, and if you intend to use th
e Elder Stone for nothing other than a way to protect the city, I am willing to help.”
It would be her way of interfering with the Collector. At the same time, she thought that she could use it to draw him out. If he was interested in this Elder Stone, as she suspected he was, then she would do whatever it took to coax him out of hiding.
“Why do you want to help?”
“Because I believe there is someone who calls himself the Collector. And I believe that I am going to have to stop him.”
Alistan nodded slowly. “I don’t know that I agree, but…” He sighed before finally shaking his head and saying, “Come with me.”
20
Carth sat in the massive library, the hearth crackling comfortably, an untouched glass of wine resting on a tray in front of her and a plate of food spread out on it. Durand had stopped in when she had arrived and had greeted her with a smile but had said nothing else.
Carth wasn’t sure whether that was an acknowledgment that he approved of her presence or whether it was his way of checking on her. She had already heard him state that he would not allow Alistan to find the Elder Stone.
“This is what drew me to Keyall,” Alistan said, leaning over a book that he rested on the table between them. This close to him, Carth could smell the spice he wore as a cologne and found it not unpleasant. The hardness in his eyes was gone, replaced by an eagerness.
“This?”
“It was the first volume I found that referenced the Elder Stones.”
Carth scanned the page and read through it quickly. It spoke of incredibly powerful beings known as the elders and had a sense that reminded her of a children’s tale, nothing factual about it.
“Why were you convinced that this was real?” Carth asked.
“Only because it echoes what I’ve read in other places. If it were only this, I would not have thought anything of it, but I read this, and it intrigued me. Where I am from, there are no stories of Elder Stones.”
“And where is that?”
Alistan only smiled and shook his head. “You can see that this story refers to the Elder Stones as items of great power. If this is to be believed, they were used by these elders to claim different parts of the world.”
Carth thought about what she’d heard of the Elder Stones and remembered Alayna referencing them and saying that they were rumored to exist in Elaeavn. If these Stones were real, she could see why the Collector would want them.
She could imagine another person that she knew wanting them. Someone who might be worse than the Collector.
“What else did you discover?”
Alistan made his way to the shelf, pulled another book from it, and hurried over to Carth, flopping the book open in front of her. This one was written in a language she couldn’t read. She considered herself reasonably educated and had taken pains to learn as much as possible, but there were limits to her capacity as well as to her time.
“I can’t read it.”
Alistan considered her for a moment, cocking his head to the side, almost as if listening to something. “No? I would’ve thought… it doesn’t matter. You’ll have to trust me when I say that this refers to a place far to the north, a place where night is given great power. There is an ancient Elder, one that this book refers to as Ihnish, who ruled there long ago and ultimately gifted his Elder Stone to the people.”
Carth stared at the page. Though she couldn’t read the words, there was something to the story that made her uncomfortable. Was he saying that this ancient Elder had gifted the people of Ih with the connection to the shadows? That seemed unlikely, but probably it was nothing more than a child’s tale, the same way that the last book had been.
“And you thought that I could read this because of its reference to Ihnish?”
“You control the shadows, do you not?”
Carth nodded. “I control the shadows and I can read some of ancient Ih, but I don’t recognize that.”
Alistan frowned, pressing his lips together tightly. “Hmm. What of this?” He placed another book in front of her and turned the pages to a section that had a small drawing. “This references another Elder, the opposite of Ihnish’s, one who thrived in the daylight, which the story referred to as Ras.”
Carth frowned at the name. “Ras?”
Alistan’s brow raised. “You’ve heard of it?”
She smiled to herself. “I know a Ras, but not as an Elder.”
“Would this friend have been tied to the daylight?”
That would be one way to describe Ras and his connection to the flame, but she doubted that he would have referred to himself in the same way. Carth considered the page and was surprised to realize that she could recognize some of the writing. It was in the same language as her mother’s old herbalism books. She had never taken the time to study them long enough to understand the language, but she did recognize some of the words.
“What else have you discovered?”
“That doesn’t impress you?”
“What, two stories that could be nothing more than children’s tales?”
Alistan smiled. “You’re right. They could be, but again, I found another story, this one from a land that I believe one of your companions is quite familiar with.”
He went to the shelf and sorted through the books until he came up with the one that he was searching for. He pulled it off the shelf and flipped open the pages. This was written in a language that Carth understood, and she scanned the page, quickly reading it.
It referred to an Elder called the Great Watcher, who had placed several Stones, one that allowed his people to be connected to life around him. According to this story, the people connected to the Great Watcher carried a marker of his blessing.
Carth sat back, staring at the page. “The marker of his blessing would be the coloring of their eyes,” Carth said, mostly to herself.
“What is that?” Alistan asked.
Carth nodded at the page. “If this section is to be believed, the people this Elder watches over are gifted with a blessing, and a marker of this blessing. This marker reflects the power given to them by their Elder.”
Alistan frowned before nodding. “You believe the green eyes of those from Elaeavn would be this marker.”
Carth shrugged. “If the story is to be believed, that would be a reasonable explanation.”
“You don’t believe it?”
“Again, these are stories.”
“Stories, but there is no denying the fact that you have a gift of the night. You can control it. And you also have a gift of the sunlight. You control that. And I believe that your companion has been gifted by the Great Watcher.”
Carth didn’t know whether to believe what Alistan was trying to tell her or whether she should think that he had been chasing nothing more than stories. “I thought you would be more of a scholar,” Carth said.
“You’re still not convinced?”
“How can I be convinced by what you shared with me so far? These are stories.”
Alistan stood and went to the shelf again, this time to the section nearest the hearth. He grabbed a book bound in a strange stone cover, and it took Carth a moment to realize that it was a sheet of the stone that the temple had been made from, the rock that the entire city sat on. When he sat down, he opened the book and began flipping through pages. Once again, Carth didn’t recognize the language and realized that it must be from ancient Keyall.
“This is a copy of a text that once would have sat in the temple. The people here worshiped their Elder, who watched over them from the sea. This Elder had great power, and because of his location, he was able to ignore the power of Ras and of Ihnish.”
“Which is why you think the stone has resistance to my magic?”
“It’s not only I who believe that,” he said. “The oldest people of this place believed it as well, which was why the tribunal did not fear your magic and did not fear being able to adequately sentence you. Those who are truly descended from Bal would be ab
le to ignore your touch.”
Was that why her magic had not worked on certain people? If they were descended from Keyall—truly descended from Keyall—it was possible that they were able to ignore her magic, especially if any of the stories of the elders were true.
And Carth didn’t necessarily believe that they were true, only that the people had believed them. There had to be some explanation for the reason behind her magic and why it was different than others, and she hadn’t given it much thought before.
“What makes you think the Elder Stone still exists?”
“Without it, the people would have begun to lose their connection.”
“And you’re sure they still have this connection?”
“I’m quite certain of it. There are people who have moved to Keyall and, over time, gradually begun to display some evidence of this resistance. It’s nothing like those who have lived here for a long time, but it’s enough that it makes me think that there is something to it, and that the Elder Stone exists.”
Carth looked at the book, thinking that if nothing else, the fact that Alistan believed it was enough for her to at least consider the possibility that it might exist. But where?
“Where do you think to find it? The temple? Is that why you’re looking there?”
“I’m looking for evidence near the temple, but I don’t think that I will find it there. If it did exist, it has long since been moved.”
“Unless it’s buried somewhere,” Carth said.
“It must be buried somewhere, but where is the question.”
If the Stone had existed, it would have been in a place where it could help the people of Keyall, wouldn’t it?
And maybe there was nothing to the stories. Maybe it was little more than rumor, but if there was any meat to them, Carth needed to know, because it was where the Collector would be likely to head next.
“Where all have you looked?” she asked.
“I’ve been all over the coast but haven’t found anything.”
Carth frowned. “Didn’t you say this Elder was supposed to be the Elder of the sea?”
“That is what the stories would say.”
“Then maybe you’ve been looking in the wrong place.”
Shadow Games (The Collector Chronicles Book 2) Page 14