The Great Betrayal (The Lost Prophecy Book 8)

by D. K. Holmberg

  Not from both of them. It came primarily from the larger groeliin, the one that had been the swordmaster. When it hit her, it rolled over her, leaving her tingling and breathless.

  “What happened?” Jassan asked.

  Isandra shook her head. What had happened? She didn’t know that she could explain what it was, only that she had felt a massive buildup of power, and that it seemed to direct her.

  “They want us to wait.”

  “How do you know?” Jassan asked. Novan was watching her strangely, but he said nothing.

  “Because I feel it from the way they connected to me with their manehlin,” she said.

  “What does that mean?” Jassan asked.

  Isandra shook her head. She didn’t know but worried that she should.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Night had fallen, and Isandra still hadn’t seen the groeliin begin to move. What were they waiting for? They sat on the rocky ridgeline, staring down at something on the far side. She hadn’t detected anything from their manehlin since the last time, nothing that would alert her in the same way that it had before.

  Wind gusted, a cool breeze coming out of the north, and she pulled her cloak tightly around her.

  Her merahl companion rested at her feet, occasionally lifting her head and sniffing. Other times, she would stand and bound away only to return a short time later. Each time she did, she came back seemingly satisfied. The only message that Isandra had from the merahl was that the groeliin they followed did not approach.

  How long would they wait here? Her stomach rumbled, and her mouth was dry from thirst. They were ill prepared for a journey of this length, but they had ventured willingly, so that they could follow these two groeliin, to see what the rest of the groeliin intended. Jassan had been restless, and she had a sense that he would prefer to have gone somewhere else, whether that was to return, or whether that meant him finding what the groeliin watched, she didn’t know.

  “They’re waiting for something,” Novan said.

  “What do you think they’re waiting for?” Jassan asked.

  The historian shook his head. “I don’t know. Have you seen the groeliin behave like this before?”

  “I’ve not,” Jassan said. “Then again, I’ve not seen groeliin that weren’t intent to attack before, either. Isandra has changed much, hasn’t she?”

  Novan watched her, before finally nodding. “She has.”

  Isandra stared at the groeliin, trying to decide what she needed to do. Novan was right. They were waiting for something. Or maybe it was that they were waiting for someone.

  “I’m going to get closer,” she said.

  Jassan grabbed her wrist. “Do you think that’s wise?”

  “I don’t think any of this is wise,” she said with a smile. “I think that it’s needed. We need to see if there’s anything the groeliin are doing that we can explain. We need to understand if there’s some reason for them to be waiting there.”

  “She’s right,” Novan said.

  They picked their way down the mountain slope, moving as quietly as possible in the darkness. The merahl bounded ahead of her, guiding her steps. When they reached the floor of the valley before them, Isandra hurried across, reaching the other side where she could climb quickly up. As she climbed, she felt pressure from the groeliin again.

  This was against her manehlin and enough pressure that she recognized the warning.

  She raised her hand, using a signal that Jassan used with his Antrilii, a marker to slow and wait.

  She glanced back, making certain that they didn’t push forward. Both of them paused, waiting for her.

  Isandra continued carefully along the rocks, climbing with her body pressed against stone, trying to move as silently as possible. The merahl jumped ahead of her, showing her which rocks would be stable. She appreciated the presence of the merahl and the way that her companion guided her.

  Isandra reached a flat section where she could stand. She looked down and noted Jassan and Novan looking up at her, waiting. Once again, she signaled with her hand, motioning to them to wait.

  Still feeling the pressure from the groeliin, she continued forward slowly. The air carried the stink of their scent, and she felt a trembling within her chest, a nervous energy. She was close to them—much closer than she probably should be.

  Despite that, she didn’t feel afraid. If they had wanted to attack, they could have done so in the cavern—or at any point during this journey—but they had not.

  Isandra continued creeping forward. The merahl remained at her side, not ranging ahead of her now. She sniffed the air, and her ears twitched; her short tail remained stiff, a sign that the merahl was ready to bound off at any moment.

  A shape appeared on the rock.

  Isandra froze.

  It was the large groeliin.

  The creature stood there, not moving closer to her, not making any sort of threatening gesture, but simply stood apart from her.

  Manehlin stretched away from it, and she recognized the energy within it. It was similar to what she possessed, and it flowed away from the groeliin, and reached her. Much like it did when Jassan connected to her, there was a message within the connection. What message was the groeliin trying to give her? It seemed as if she should understand, but there was enough strangeness to it that she didn’t know whether she could.

  They had waited for her. That much she believed. The groeliin wanted her to approach.

  Isandra did so, moving carefully. She kept one hand close to the hilt of her sword, prepared to unsheathe if need be, but hoping that it would not be. She stopped only a few paces away from the groeliin.

  “You don’t want to harm me, do you?” she asked.

  The groeliin made a strange sound, one that was different from the hissing that the groeliin had typically vocalized. This was almost a word, and Isandra had a sense that she should recognize it.

  “What is it? What is here that you would like me to see?”

  The groeliin made the strange sound once more, and Isandra tipped her head, frowning as she tried to understand what else might be buried within the sound, something that would tell her what the groeliin wanted her to know.

  She couldn’t tell, not in this way.

  Was there another way? Could she use her manehlin in such a way that it would allow her to understand what the groeliin was trying to share?

  She pushed out with it, sending it in a tight connection that reached the groeliin, and washed over it. As she began to withdraw, the groeliin’s manehlin connected to hers, and held.

  Isandra’s eyes widened slightly. She couldn’t withdraw her manehlin from the groeliin.

  That had never happened to her before. Always when there was a connection, there was an ability to withdraw, but the groeliin made it so that she could not.

  Rather than fighting, she waited, trying to determine if there was something the groeliin wanted from her, or if it would try to overpower her. If needed, she could use her teralin sword to augment her connection to the manehlin, but she didn’t have a sense of fear from what the groeliin was doing, only an uncertainty.

  The manehlin flowed to her, but then flowed back to the groeliin.

  This time, when the groeliin made the odd sound, she understood.

  “They are coming,” the groeliin said.

  Isandra’s breath caught. The creature could talk?

  “Who is coming?”

  “The others are coming.” Though Isandra heard it as words that she understood, she recognized the groeliin used a strange, guttural way of speaking.

  She waited for more information, hoping the groeliin would explain more of what it meant, but it did not. The creature turned away from her, then made its way toward the ledge looking over the next valley.

  Isandra approached carefully and stood next to the groeliin. It was a strange sensation for her to be this close to the groeliin, and for her to be unconcerned about the proximity. Yet as she stood here, she realized t
hat, much as she suspected, the groeliin had changed. The creature was taller and had taken on more of a manlike shape.

  “Who are you expecting to be here?” she asked the groeliin.

  They remain connected—their manehlin tied together—and she had a slight concern that she wouldn’t be able to separate from the groeliin, that it would always remain connected to her. What would happen to her if that were the case? Would she always be bound to the groeliin? Would she always be aware of the creature, or would distance make a difference?

  “Not expecting. They are coming.”

  Isandra followed the direction of the groeliin’s gaze but saw nothing moving through the mountains.

  The merahl yelped softly behind her, and she turned, noting her merahl companion watching her with caution. The merahl didn’t come too close to the groeliin, though Isandra wondered whether that was because the merahl feared the groeliin, or because she did not want to scare them?

  “You are different,” she said to the groeliin.

  “You made me different,” the creature said.

  “I don’t know what I did. I don’t know what impact it had on you.”

  “You took away… anger.”

  “Did it hurt?”

  “Change is always painful,” the groeliin said.

  “Did this change cause you significant pain?” She remembered the groeliin hissing at her as she had forced the teralin—or the sense of the teralin—within the groeliin.

  “It was very painful.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  The groeliin grunted. “No need for sorry. The anger is gone.”

  The smaller groeliin was about a dozen steps below her, standing on another ledge, remaining motionless. “What of that one?”

  “He is uncertain. You took the anger from him, as well, but now, he does not know what he is meant to do.”

  “What were you meant to do before?”

  The groeliin turned toward her, and for a moment, she felt a flicker of fear. There was darkness that passed behind the groeliin’s eyes, but then it was gone. “Destroy. We were taught how to destroy.”

  “Who taught you to fight with the sword?”

  “The master taught.”

  “The master?” Did the groeliin mean the High Priest? How could Isandra ask that question? It seemed difficult to convey to the groeliin what she meant, and difficult to convey the sense of the High Priest.

  “The master taught anger. The master taught how to fight.”

  “Your kind has not been known to fight with swords before.”

  The groeliin stared at her, and there was a flickering sense in the creature’s gaze. “Before. I do not know this.”

  “How do you know how to speak?”

  “We speak, but others don’t listen. We have tried to speak to them before.”

  “How do you speak to me?”

  “Your gift.”

  “Which gift was that?” Was it only about the manehlin? If so, was it possible for her to now understand other groeliin?

  She couldn’t imagine what other groeliin might say, and couldn’t imagine the anger they would have, especially at what they had experienced. She had no doubt the groeliin had suffered, but then again, they were often the instigator.

  “The gift of peace. You gave peace.”

  She heard movement behind her and turned. Jassan and Novan had crept up the rock wall and stood at a measured distance behind her, watching to see whether she was in any danger. Jassan kept his hands near the hilt of his sword, and Novan had his staff gripped in both hands, as if he intended to dart forward and crash it into the groeliin.

  “Isandra?” Jassan asked.

  “I’m okay,” she said.

  “What… what are you doing?”

  “I’m speaking to the groeliin.”

  Jassan glanced to Novan, but the historian kept his focus on Isandra. “How are you able to speak to the groeliin?” Novan asked.

  “There is a connection between our manehlin. I don’t know how to explain any more than that, but that connection allows me to understand the groeliin.”

  “Does that connection allow you to speak the same way as the groeliin?” Novan asked.

  “Speak?”

  Novan nodded.

  Was that what she had been doing? She didn’t think that she had, but how else would the groeliin have understood her?

  “The groeliin tells me others are coming.”

  “Other groeliin?” Novan asked.

  “I don’t know. Some others. The groeliin doesn’t seem to know.”

  That wasn’t necessarily true. She didn’t know whether the groeliin didn’t know—or simply wasn’t able to tell her.

  “Are you in any danger?” Jassan asked.

  “I don’t think so. I don’t think the groeliin wants to harm me. He tells me that he was trained by his master to use the sword, and that I took away the anger within him when I changed the polarity of teralin. He said that I gave him peace.”

  “Peace?” Novan asked.

  Isandra nodded. “Why? Is that significant in some way?”

  Novan tapped his staff on the ground and looked at the groeliin, seeming to see him for the first time. His brow furrowed as he studied the groeliin, and his mouth pressed into a tight line. He tapped his staff on the ground once more, and power surged from it that washed over the groeliin. When it retreated, the groeliin looked back at Novan.

  “He does not have to test me,” the groeliin said.

  Novan’s eyes went wide. “I… I understood.”

  Isandra nodded. “Did you attempt to connect your manehlin to him?”

  “I didn’t attempt to connect mine but to see what connection had formed between yours and his. When I did, it was as if—”

  Isandra nodded. “It was as if the connection to manehlin was grabbed by the groeliin.”

  “Yes,” Novan said. “What does that mean?”

  Isandra considered the groeliin. “I don’t know.”

  “They come.” This came from the smaller groeliin, and in a softer voice than the larger one spoke with. If the larger one was right, this groeliin was uncertain about its role, and that was a sentiment that she fully understood. With everything that had happened to her, she remained uncertain about her role. There was less of that now, as more time passed since having regained her Magi abilities, but she still didn’t know where she fit in. She was a Mage, and now she was married to an Antrilii, but she didn’t see how she could fit within both worlds. Maybe she was never meant to. Maybe she needed to find her own pathway, one that was different from both, but what would that mean for Jassan?

  “Who comes?” Isandra asked the larger groeliin again.

  “They come.”

  She stepped up to the ledge, standing next to the larger groeliin. From here, she noted the rocks around her and saw movement in the distance.

  Her breath caught.

  Down in the valley, there were dozens of groeliin, and each of them was massive, nearly the same size as the tall groeliin she stood next to. All were armed with swords. A swarm of smaller groeliin were with them, probably a hundred in total, and they moved quickly.

  The merahl howled softly. It was a reminder for caution, a plea for Isandra. What did the merahl think she might do?

  “That’s who you’ve been waiting for?” she asked. Was this some sort of trap? She hadn’t expected the groeliin to lead her into a trap, but it had always been a possibility. And after talking with the groeliin, she hadn’t expected that she would be in any danger, but maybe she had misread the circumstances regarding the groeliin. Maybe it had only brought her here in order to capture her—or find a way to destroy her.

  With that number of groeliin, there wouldn’t be anything they could do to counter them. There were too many creatures, far too many for her to manage on her own, even with Jassan and Novan.

  Isandra stepped back, looking up at the massive groeliin that towered over her.

  The groeliin looked a
t her, and she wondered if that was a flicker of darkness in its eyes, or if it was something else. “They have come,” the groeliin said. “Now you must bring them peace, as well.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “The groeliin wants me to help the others,” she said.

  They had climbed down the side of the rock, making it so that they could blend into the mountain a little better, their cloaks wrapped around them. A cool breeze gusted, but it wasn’t nearly as biting and cold as it was higher up in the mountains. The air held the stink of the groeliin, and a dark haze filled the valley below where the groeliin had paused. They seemed to be waiting for something, too.

  “How do you know it’s not a trap?” Jassan said.

  “I don’t.”

  Novan leaned on his staff, and she noted the length of it glowing softly, manehlin poured into the staff, though he didn’t move. “How do you expect to move enough power to help them?” Novan asked.

  Isandra stared into the valley, wondering the same thing. When she’d helped the large groeliin, when she had shifted it, somehow forcing the change in polarity, she had done so inside one of the caverns, and had required the assistance of the teralin in its walls —and Novan’s staff—to be successful. Without something similar—a place much like that where she could keep the groeliin trapped—it seemed there would be no way for her to have success. More than that, when she had done it before, there had been the ring of teralin-forged swords. She would not have those since the rest of the Antrilii had returned to Farsea.

  “I don’t think I can,” she said.

  “You must help them. You need to bring them peace.” The groeliin had not moved, still standing on the edge of the rock.

  “Do you know them? Is that why you want me to help them?”

  “They are my clan. You must help them.”

  Isandra stared, struggling with the request. How could she help when there was not enough power for her to do so? How could she make a difference? Yet how could she not try? She had made a difference with this groeliin. Whatever else she had done, she had changed this creature, and had shifted the groeliin from a violent creature into something else. If she could do that with one groeliin, could she not do it with others? Could she not create an entire clan of saved groeliin?