“But the Elder Stone—”
Carth shook her head. “You don’t need the Elder Stone. You never have.”
Alistan looked around him, his eyes skimming across the temple. “I would love to have seen the temple when it was first erected. I think of how difficult it must have been to create, the skill the artisans had with placing these stones together, stones that the masons of today can barely replicate. They had to have been blessed by the Elder in order to have created such majestic works.”
Carth smiled to herself. More than ever, she was convinced that Alistan was more a man of faith than of scholarship. He created an air about him, an image, that did nothing other than separate him from the people he wanted so very much to be connected to.
“I imagine it was quite impressive,” Carth said.
Alistan breathed out, letting out a long sigh. “You can’t let her have that power. You can’t let her reach the Elder Stone.”
If she didn’t, Carth would lose her friends, but if she did, what sacrifice would she be making on behalf of everyone else in Keyall? Weren’t they the kind of people she always claimed to help?
Durand had suggested she find another way. How else could she get Linsay to release her friends? What move could she make that would entice Linsay enough to release them?
How could she win this game?
Alistan left her and wandered around the ruins. She wondered, had he spent time wandering the ruins reflecting, or had he actually been searching for some answer that he had not yet found?
Was there anything that Carth could find that would help her understand a way to stop Linsay? Maybe there wasn’t anything in the ruins that would help. Maybe there was nothing for her other than more questions. Maybe the only answer was that it would take a sacrifice, and it would have to come from Alayna and Jenna.
Yet Carth didn’t want to sacrifice her friends, and with her power, why should she have to? There had to be some way for her to do both.
What move would allow that?
She paused before a puddle of water. The sunlight reflected off it, making it glow softly. Carth swirled her finger through the water, tracing a pattern, and noticed how the glow never seemed to change.
The glowing reminded her of what she’d seen in the space beneath the city when she’d been trapped in the chamber.
Carth brought a moistened finger to her lips and found the water salty. This wasn’t simply accumulated rainwater. This was seawater that had been pushed to the surface—or perhaps the sea had so infused everything here that it was salty despite how far they were from the sea.
She saw no pathway to success. Every move that she could envision making left her struggling with how she could best overwhelm Linsay.
She stood and made her way from the temple. What would Linsay expect of her? How could Carth use that against her? And how could she find a way to win this game?
Maybe it wasn’t possible to win. Maybe she was too far along in the game and needed to reset the game board.
But how would she?
What would it take for her to reset the board so that she could win?
Everything came back to Linsay’s quest for this Elder Stone.
Could she use that to reset the board? Was there anything there that would make a difference?
It would be a move she didn’t want to make, which told her that it was probably the right one.
31
Wind whipped around her. Carth should have chosen a different day, but too much time had passed already since she’d last seen Jenna and Alayna. If she took too much time, she feared that Linsay might sacrifice them so that Carth would be forced to do what Linsay wanted. Already she feared that she had spent too much time debating what she needed to do.
“Why here?” Alistan asked.
They hid near the gear house, and the wind swirling around her fluttered her hair and whipped at her cloak. There was more wind today than was usual for Keyall, and the dark sky held thick clouds that threatened rain. It was fitting for an Elder who claimed water, Carth decided.
“I need to draw her out.”
“By bringing her to the very place where you claim the Elder Stone power can be found?”
“I’m trying to reset the board,” Carth said.
“What does that mean?”
“Have you ever played a game that isn’t going the way that you need it to go, and despite every effort you make to get back into the game, you can see that there is no way that you will find a winning play?”
“There are many times when it becomes helpless. That’s the beauty of the game. You play and play, but eventually there is a winner and a loser.”
“I’m determined not to be the loser this time.”
“By starting over?”
Carth looked out at the water. She could hear the waves crashing far below and imagined the froth that would be there. Would she be able to find the same tunnel that she had found before? Was it even something that she wanted to try?
“I’ve already lost. This way, I’m choosing the pieces to go where I want them, ignoring the moves that she has made.”
“Why here, then?”
She had been trying to figure out what to do when the answer came to her. Alistan wasn’t the only one who was attempting to become a part of Keyall. Talia had done the same thing, though she had done it differently. She had been here many years and had already begun to develop some resistance to Carth’s magic, enough that it suggested that she had been here longer than she had claimed. And Carth thought she knew why.
“Because I want to see all the pieces that are involved in this game.”
“What if it’s not a game?” Alistan asked.
“Everything is a game, if put into the right context, and especially to her.”
They stood in the shadows. Carth made no effort to wrap them around herself, preferring to shield both herself and Alistan with the physical building rather than anything magical. If she was right, her magic wouldn’t work on Talia anyway.
They waited for an hour, not much more than that, before Carth noted a figure making its way along the road toward the gear house. As they approached, she could make out Talia’s face.
“That’s—” Alistan began, but Carth silenced him with a hand on his arm.
“That is,” Carth whispered.
Talia made short work of lowering herself onto the platform, the steady creak fading into the gusty wind that swirled around them. When she had disappeared, Carth stepped forward, bringing Alistan with her.
“Where’s she going?” Alistan asked. “As far as I know, there are no prisoners here.”
“No. If there were prisoners, the gear house would be secured.” It had been that way when she had been imprisoned here, and since then—since she had rescued her friends—she had seen no one in the gear house.
She had known that Talia worked on behalf of Linsay, but there was something about the way that she had been helping Linsay that had troubled Carth for a while, long enough that she hadn’t managed to work out why until only recently.
Talia was playing a different game.
That was the only answer that Carth could come up with. It was the reason that she had struggled to figure out why Talia was helping Linsay, and why she was willing to harm people Carth was close to. Talia didn’t have the same dark anger that she had seen from Linsay, but she did feel a sense of obligation to her sister.
“Then why here? Why would she have come to the cells?”
“When you came to visit, you brought Talia with you.”
Alistan shrugged. “Talia has been known as many things in Keyall. She was serving me at that time and she had a familiarity with the cells, so I suspected that she had served others on the tribunal and that was why she was able to escort me so easily to them.”
“When I first met Talia, she was able to pierce the darkness that I shrouded myself with,” Carth said. “It’s much the same as those who are native to Keyall.”
; “Talia isn’t native to Keyall.”
“No. She isn’t. Which raises the question as to how she has developed resistance to my magic.”
“You think she has found the Elder Stone?”
Carth looked down into the darkness. The platform hovered there, far enough below her that she thought she could jump and reach it, but would Talia realize that she was there?
Maybe it wouldn’t matter. If she was right about what she had determined of Talia, then the other woman was not playing along with Linsay’s game, not nearly as well as the Collector had assumed. It was the first mistake that Carth had seen the Collector make.
“I don’t know that she found the Elder Stone so much as she found a way to reach the same power that you’ve searched for.”
“And what is that?”
“Let’s go find out.”
Alistan looked over the edge, his mouth pinched in a frown, and he nodded slowly.
Carth took his arm and they jumped.
Alistan gasped softly as they whistled through the air, so she silenced him by wrapping shadows around them. The platform loomed into view and Carth pushed against it, using the shadows to cushion their blow and muffle their landing.
When they stopped, Alistan trembled softly. “That was not what I was expecting.”
“I should have warned you. Now, we need to be quiet,” Carth whispered.
He nodded. They made their way into the cavern. This was not one that had been used to hold Carth or her friends, and it was wide, much wider than either of those had been. The darkness was nearly complete, little light from the outside managing to make it very far past the cave entrance. Alistan gripped her sleeve tightly, as if fearful that were he to let go, Carth would abandon him here. If she did abandon him and return to the surface, it was possible that no one would ever know that he was here.
Every so often, Carth paused to listen, focusing on the sounds of the cave. After a while, she noted the sound of soft footsteps shuffling near the back of the cave. There was another strange sound mixed with it, almost a splashing.
Carth moved forward slowly and carefully. As she did, she saw a faint glowing that pierced the darkness, the first disturbance in the darkness that she had come across.
She moved forward, each step careful and cushioned by her shadows. Talia might be able to see through her shadows, but would she be able to listen through them? Carth thought that less likely.
When she reached the glowing, she realized that it was the back wall of the cave. A small pool of water took up one corner of the floor. It glowed softly, much like the pool that she’d seen up near the temple, and much like the water in the chamber far below.
There was no sign of Talia.
She looked over and saw a silhouetted form in the distance. If Talia reached the platform before they did, she would disappear, leaving them trapped.
Carth stood and hurried forward, no longer mindful of muting the sound of her passing.
“Talia!”
The other woman froze and turned toward her. Carth hurried forward, wanting to reach her before she had a chance to try to disappear.
“Why are you here? Are you still following me?” Talia asked.
She reached Talia as the other woman stood outside the cave on the platform. All Talia would have to do would be to begin to raise the platform and she could disappear. Carth could jump after her, but she doubted that she would be able to pull Alistan with her, at least not very easily.
“This time I’m following you. I wasn’t before.”
“I don’t know where your friends are. You can take me, torture me if you think you need to, but I won’t be able to provide that answer. She keeps that even from me.”
Was that bitterness in her voice? It seemed as if it might be, which lent credence to Carth’s suspicion.
“You’ve been coming to these cells for a while, haven’t you?” she asked.
“I was asked to understand the people of Keyall so that I could find the Elder Stone.”
“You might not have found the Elder Stone, but you found something else, didn’t you? You found a source of power, and you’ve been using it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Talia said.
Carth glanced behind her. Now that she knew where to look, she could make out the faint glowing pool in the distance. It was barely more than a twinkle against the darkness, so faint that she could miss it if she didn’t know it was there. Somehow, Talia had discovered it—and discovered that there was a connection to it that she could use.
“It took me a while to realize that I was asking the wrong questions,” Carth said. “I should have wondered why you had the ability to see through the shadows sooner than I did.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“But you do. You haven’t told her, have you?” Had Carth ruined Talia’s secret? She had mentioned something when confronting Linsay, but maybe it hadn’t been enough to spoil Talia’s secret, and not enough to make Talia have to come up with an explanation as to how she had the abilities that she did.
“What do you think I’m able to do?” Talia asked.
“I think that you’ve acquired abilities in your time here. You haven’t been in Keyall long, certainly not long enough for them to consider you anything other than an outsider, and yet, despite that, you have begun to develop the same tendencies that they have, though in some ways, your connection to them seems even stronger than the others I’ve faced.”
“It’s nothing more than an enhancement. I believe your friend was familiar with them?”
The mention of Boiyn caused a surge of anger, though Carth tried to ignore it. That was the reaction that Talia wanted from her. She was attempting to play Carth, and Carth would refuse to be drawn into that. She knew better.
“I’ve had enough experience with enhancements to know that what you’re experiencing is not an enhancement. You have something else. What you have is innate to you and doesn’t wear off. Yet you still come here,” Carth said, glancing back at the distant glowing along the edge of the wall. “Is that because you want to be even stronger with this ability?”
“There’s something about the water,” Talia said.
Alistan sucked in a sharp breath. “The water?”
Carth glanced over at him. “Not all the water. There is certain water, and Talia has discovered that it springs from that same well that I described to you. That’s what’s giving her the strength that she has. That’s what’s giving the followers of Bal the power they have. Perhaps it is nothing more than an enhancement, but I don’t think that’s all there is to it.”
Carth wished that she had Boiyn to ask, and missed him just as acutely now as she did when he had died. Without him, she couldn’t have the answers that she needed. She wouldn’t be able to understand whether there was anything more to the water.
“How long would it take for the effects to work?” Carth asked. Enhancements worked quickly, and often with the first dose.
“At first there was very little change. Nothing more than a slight shifting of the shadows so that I could see clearly through them.”
“And now?”
“Now it’s stronger. It has taken time to become that way, but the effect is much stronger than it had been before.”
“And why haven’t you told Linsay?”
“What makes you think that I haven’t?”
“Because you’re sneaking here in the dark and in the night. If you had told your sister, she would have come with you and you would have shared with her what you’d learned. She wouldn’t need to hold Jenna and Alayna hostage and try to force me to show her where to find an Elder Stone.”
“Are you so certain?” Talia asked.
“No. I’m not certain about anything, but I am determined to save my friends and prevent your sister from stealing the secret of these people. She hasn’t earned the right to it.”
Talia stared at her for a long minute, and then she switc
hed her gaze to Alistan. “And what of him?” she asked with a nod. “He’s been searching for an Elder Stone for much longer than my sister.”
At least now Carth knew that Linsay had not been chasing the Elder Stone before learning of Alistan’s interest. His scholarly intrigue had drawn her, and she had wanted to find—and likely use—the Elder Stone for a much different reason. Whereas Alistan wanted acceptance, Linsay would use the power of the Elder Stone for something else. Carth still didn’t know quite what that was, but maybe it didn’t matter.
“He has, and the people of Keyall—those who matter—are fully aware of his interest and have made it clear that they will not tolerate him trying to find the Elder Stone.”
“What does it matter? There aren’t many places like that. It took me nearly a year to find another, and eventually that will dry up.”
Carth studied Talia. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe Linsay did know about Talia’s use of the pool. If Linsay knew that the water would eventually dry up, then she would want to know how to find the source.
Which meant that she already knew there was a source.
Carth should know that, as a master of Tsatsun, Linsay might be a step or more ahead of her. She should have planned better, anticipating that Linsay already knew everything that Carth had determined. It seemed as if every step was pushing Carth forward, as if everything that she learned was forcing her to do exactly what Linsay wanted.
And what Carth wanted was to reset the board.
“Where was the first one you found?”
“In one of the cells. I thought to investigate them for Linsay and came across the strange water in one of the cells.”
“How did you learn of its properties?”
“Because I drank it.”
“Even with the salt?”
Talia shook her head. “It’s not salt. It’s whatever is in the stone that filters through. That’s what you’re tasting.”
Could the stone have filtered out the salt from the water? Why the salt and not whatever it was that was glowing within it?
Carth glanced over at Alistan. Unless it really was what he described and there was this connection between land and sea, two elders who had come together, fighting the effects of darkness and light.
Shadow Games (The Collector Chronicles Book 2) Page 21