At the top, the room changed. It was different here than it was below. On this level, rows of shelves lined the walls. Books neatly placed on the shelves, and perfectly arranged. She noted spines written in the ancient language as well as some written in a language she didn’t understand. A few were written in the common tongue, though surprisingly, not as many as she would’ve expected. Some appeared to be historian journals, though that would be rare enough in any library, let alone one that seemed to be for the Antrilii. Even in the palace, there were few of the historian journals, not nearly enough to fully understand the Historian Guild. They preferred to remain secretive, keeping their journals to themselves, offering only replicas—and those were often poorly done, offered so that the historians could claim they were not keeping their knowledge from the rest of the world, but not sharing nearly as much as most would prefer.
“Sit,” Rebecca said.
Isandra shook her head. “I am an Elder—”
“Yes. Yes. Yes. I understand that you are a great and wise Elder on the Council of the Magi. Just as I understand that you have been weakened, and that you are unable to fully access your abilities.”
“How do you know?”
“How? You practically radiate weakness. Around here, in these lands, where the groeliin are hunted, such weakness is easily detected.”
Rebecca forced her down into a chair, and when Isandra sat, she found herself in one of the softest chairs she’d ever sat in. Sinking into it, she sighed. After her long journey, sitting in something as comfortable as this chair, something that reminded her of what she had left behind in Vasha, she didn’t think she could lift herself were she to have the need. Her body ached from her travels, but the fatigue was more than that. It had taken a force of will, strength that she never would have guessed she possessed, to press forward with the Antrilii, and to continue making her way toward these lands.
“What did they do to you?”
“How do you know of it?”
“There have been rumors out of the south. But it is more than that. We have heard of others who have lost abilities they possessed.”
“Others? What others? Do you mean the Magi?”
“Do you think you are the first Mage they have stolen from?”
She knew she wasn’t. Longtree had even made clear that she wasn’t even the first in Rondalin. They had stolen from Wendiy and left her weakened, then finally killed her. That had probably been a mercy for her, though Isandra didn’t know how much the woman had suffered, other than hearing her whimpering in the cell next to hers. Isandra had done what she could to try and soothe her, but there really wasn’t much for her to do. Not from where she had been; not with the weakness she suffered from as well.
“No,” Isandra said. She sat with her arms wrapped around her, her eyes drifting toward the shelves, skimming across the countless books in the library. There were so many, enough that she felt as if she could lose herself in them for months trying to read them all, at least to see if there was anything she might be able to learn from them.
“You haven’t answered the first question.”
“They branded me,” she answered. She pulled up the edge of her pants, revealing the marking. She didn’t look at it. She no longer could look at it, though she knew it with her eyes closed. She could practically feel the pattern in her mind, and could feel the way the power that made her a Mage drained from her. It was as if everything that the gods had given her bled out, leaving her with nothing.
Rebecca knelt in front of her and cupped her hands around Isandra’s left ankle. She hummed softly to herself, speaking in a murmur of words that was almost too soft to hear, and in a language she didn’t understand. Isandra noted a surge of warmth from Rebecca’s hands, one that felt strangely like the Magi healing. That had a distinct quality to it, one that seemed to trigger something within the person receiving the healing, using their own energy to facilitate it.
Isandra sat stiffly. Was there anything Rebecca would be able to do? It seemed so unlikely. What had been done to her had a magical quality to it—it had to, as it took away her natural abilities. It stole her gift of reaching for the manehlin, and manipulating it. Undoing it would require a similar energy. She doubted the Antrilii possessed such magic.
After a while, Rebecca finally pulled her hand away, sitting back on her heels. She stared at Isandra’s ankle, shaking her head slightly from side to side, a frustrated frown on her face.
“This is beyond my ability,” she said.
“Your ability? What ability do you possess that would allow you to undo what the Deshmahne did to me?”
Rebecca tipped her head to the side as she considered Isandra. “Do you think the Magi are the only ones gifted by the gods?”
“Yes.”
Rebecca grunted. “That might be the greatest arrogance of the Magi. How do you think the Antrilii have managed to keep you safe for centuries?”
“You fight the groeliin.”
“Fight the groeliin. Yes. But how?”
Isandra shrugged. “I suppose that you train, much like the Denraen in Vasha train.”
“The Denraen are not Antrilii.”
The statement was layered with something that she sensed Rebecca wanted her to know, that she wanted her to pick up. “Are you telling me the Antrilii are more like the Magi?” Jassan had called them cousins, hadn’t he?
Rebecca grunted again. She stood, crossing her arms over her chest, her gaze still staring down at Isandra’s ankles. “We are descended from the same people. Have you not figured that out yet? I thought that was why you had come here.”
“I came here because Jassan offered me his protection. After the attacks in the south, I needed protection.”
“You would have needed less protection had your people never given up the sword.”
“And you fight? You weren’t in the south. You didn’t face the groeliin.”
In one fluid movement, Rebecca unsheathed a short-bladed sword and stabbed it into the wood near Isandra’s feet. “I have fought, and I have faced groeliin more times than you can count, Mage Elder. Do not accuse me of being an oathbreaker.”
“I would never accuse you of being an oathbreaker.” Partly because she had no idea what this oath was, other than that it was to the gods and the Antrilii vowed they would continue to fight the groeliin and protect the south. From what Rebecca and and Jassan asserted, being an oathbreaker was viewed as the worst thing one of the Antrilii could be accused of.
“I cannot help you with this injury, but others of the Yahinv might be able to. Perhaps if we work together, we can restore some of your ability.”
Rebecca sheathed her sword, and as she did, Isandra noted the faint swirling of manehlin around her, one that felt controlled, directed. Doing so was only possible by one of the Magi, and Isandra was not doing it herself. She no longer knew how much she would be able to manipulate the manehlin.
Isandra sat more stiffly in the chair than it deserved. “How is it that you can do this?”
“I told you the answer already. You don’t want to listen.”
“You are Mageborn?”
“Mage? I am no Mage. I am Antrilii. We have fought the groeliin since the time of the last destruction, the time when the Magi first laid down their swords. Your Founders left, claiming that they would protect the other lands, that they would use their abilities to defend them, while we protected the north, and prevented the groeliin from attacking. You have not upheld your end of the bargain.”
Isandra shivered, and waited for Rebecca to say something else, but she never did. She left her sitting there, saying nothing, too many questions rolling through her mind.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Roelle felt herself growing weaker. It happened rapidly, not as a gradual change, but more of a sudden shift, the little strength she’d had quickly dissipating. Pain in her back began to throb, leaving her feeling an overwhelming distortion. It was a sense of agony that left her mind unable to func
tion as it once had.
She made every attempt to hide what she was experiencing from Selton and the others, but she worried she wouldn’t be able to sustain the ruse much longer. With each passing day, he monitored her more closely, staring at her with a question in his eyes, one that she had no answer for.
When the pain became almost unbearable, they were still many days away from reaching the plains of Saeline. Once they reached those lands, they had to pass across Gom Aaldia, and then they would be nearing the lower slopes that would eventually lead to Vasha.
Roelle groaned, no longer able to tolerate the pain. She called out, screaming, trying not to, but there was no choice. Try as she might, she could no longer hide her distress.
“Roelle?” Selton asked. He called a halt to the procession, having led them over the last few days as Roelle’s strength had begun to deteriorate more rapidly. He climbed from his saddle and sat next to her on the wagon bed, taking her hand, and doing everything he could to soothe her. There was little he could do to help ease her discomfort, but having him there with her and having him attempt to soothe her meant much to her.
“I’ll be fine,” she said.
“You’re fading fast now,” Selton said. “We need to find that friend of yours.”
“No. We need to get to Vasha. If we can reach the healers, they should be able to find a way to reverse this,” she said.
“And if they don’t? If they can’t figure this out? We won’t have enough time to find Jakob.”
Roelle forced a smile. “We were never going to be able to find Jakob. If he is what Lendra suspects, he will already have disappeared, and hopefully he is trying to understand what he is, much as we tried to understand what we were when we learned of our abilities. The key is reaching Vasha. My uncle will have someone who can help. I’m certain of it.”
She didn’t feel nearly as confident as she attempted to sound, not knowing whether there was anything Alriyn could do, but he was her only hope. She couldn’t place her hopes on Jakob, especially since they had no way of finding him, but more than that, she didn’t think she had enough time to spend on a search for him.
Even reaching Vasha might be more than she could endure. And even if she survived until then, she would probably not live long enough for anyone to save her. What would her uncle Alriyn do if she arrived in Vasha only to perish?
What would Selton do? Would he attempt to lead the Magi as she had requested? Would he guide them north and to the Antrilii lands? She needed the Magi to work with the Antrilii. They needed to understand each other, and they needed to learn from one another. If they could manage that, both would be much better off.
“Roelle, I don’t want anything to happen to you. If there’s a chance that we can get you someplace safe, that we can find you the answer—the key to your healing—then don’t we need to take it?”
She squeezed his hand. There was strength in his fingers, and she appreciated that he was willing to be with her, that he had stayed so close to her. She appreciated that he had not attempted to wrest control of the Magi from her. After everything they had been through, she felt a certain amount of pride in her leadership of the Magi. Yet… she no longer could lead. She didn’t have the strength. It was better that it be Selton.
“If I go to rest with the gods, then at least I feel like I served. I feel like I’ve done something.”
“We’re Magi. We always serve the gods.”
She looked at him, smiling as she did. “Maybe initially we did. Something changed over time. Now, our service to the gods has been less than what it once was. I think it was good that we went north, and that we found the Antrilii—and the groeliin. The Magi needed to know about them. And now that they do, or at least I hope they do, we needed to face what we should have never abandoned. Our true purpose.” Her breath left her with those last words, and she grimaced.
“Roelle—”
The pain was becoming almost too much to bear. It filled her, a pulsating sort of pain. Her mind practically hummed with it, leaving her throbbing. Lights surged around her, halos of them that made it difficult for her to see much other than the sun overhead. The wind that picked up whipped at her hair and tugged on her clothes. Even that sensation was more than she could bear. All she wanted was for her pain and suffering to end.
Yet, she needed to reach Vasha. She wasn’t done. There was much that she still needed to accomplish, much that the Magi still could do. She wanted to be a part of it. She needed to be a part of it.
Try as she might, the pain and the illness overwhelmed her. She let her eyes close, and drifted, her mind going blank.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Roelle awoke.
But all she knew for sure was that she was no longer where she had been. Bright light flashed all around her, leaving her with the impression that she was in the midst of a massive field, with the sun burning down on her. The pain was gone, and her back no longer throbbed as it had, and her arms and legs seemed to move when they had not before.
Slowly, Roelle stood.
How long had it been since she’d been able to walk? How long had it been since she had managed to move her arms and legs? Weeks. Maybe longer, depending on how long she had been lying injured and immobile, under the ministrations of Nahrsin.
She was alone.
Where had Selton and the rest of the Magi gone? She was in a field with tall flowering grasses rising all around her swaying in something of a breeze, yet she felt no wind against her cheek, and there was none tugging at her hair.
Was it her imagination?
It had to be. With as sickly as she had been, anything was possible. Her mind might be trying to protect her, clouding it with this imagery, that of the grasses that seemed to swirl with a faint shimmery fog all around them. The air smelled sweet, the fragrance of the flowers mixed with a hint of the coming rain, a fresh scent, one that was pleasant and welcoming. She had never detected anything quite like it.
Could this all be a fever dream, or—had she died?
Something about this felt different from any dream she’d ever experienced before.
Like most Magi, she had known vivid dreams in the past. It was a particularly common experience for the Magi. This felt different.
Maybe she had died.
As she walked, she felt drawn in a specific direction. Roelle followed the pull on her, noting that the sway of the grasses seemed to flow in the same direction—as did the strange, swirling fog she saw around everything.
Not a fog, she decided as she stared at it. There was something familiar about it, as if she had seen it before. Where though?
For a moment, Roelle turned, looking behind her, and saw the edge of the grassy plain that seemed to fade into nothingness.
A dream. It had to be.
She welcomed the strangeness of the dream, and turned, succumbing to the pull of the energy.
She looked down and noticed that she was dressed in a silky cerulean gown. It flowed down to her ankles, covering her legs completely. And the sleeves extended all the way down to her wrists, ending in a simple embroidered cuff. She’d worn a similar gown when she had first entered training, joining the Magi as an apprentice.
Not a similar gown—the same gown.
Why would her mind have dressed her in this gown? It was the one she’d worn during a ceremony that was meant to honor the gods. Did her mind think that she needed to honor them now?
Or did the gods dress her in this gown?
If she was dead—and if she had Ascended—then maybe the gods had dressed her in it. Maybe this was what she would wear in the afterlife.
She continued forward, and the grasses changed, their flowers turning from a lush milky white to a deep, royal blue. The petals on the flowers elongated, and the leaves of the grasses became silkier, practically begging to be touched. Roelle ran her fingers along the leaves, trailing through them. It was a pleasant sensation, one that mixed with the odd pulling upon her that made this dream even more v
ivid.
The grassy field led to a thicket of trees, and Roelle paused at the edge. There was something beckoning her into the trees. She felt drawn—almost summoned. As she stood at the edge of where the grasses met the trees, she continued to feel the draw of the energy swirling through the grasses, and into the tree line.
Was this where she was meant to go?
If it was, was this some sort of vision she was being given?
Why show her these grasses and trees? Why let her feel the draw of this energy, and be pulled along by it? Why even dress her in her Ascension gown?
Roelle took another step, entering the edge of the forest.
Her skin tingled as she did.
She recognized that sense, and had felt it before. The last time had been when she had stood at the edge of the Great Forest, facing groeliin, driving them to the borders of the Forest, before slaughtering the creatures.
Did the gods want her to see something in the Great Forest?
Was that why they had brought her here?
She continued into the forest, not looking back. Whatever she was meant to see was deeper into the forest. She allowed herself to be led, guided by whatever it was the gods wanted her to see.
Yet, maybe it wasn’t the gods.
Maybe this was Jakob somehow pulling on her, recognizing her injury, and offering his assistance. If that were the case, why would he bring her here?
She realized with a start that though she could see the energy, and even the tingling along her skin, she heard no sounds. The wind seemed to blow, but she didn’t feel it. There was no evidence of her passing. There were smells, but nothing more.
What kind of vision was this?
Each step carried her deeper into the forest faster than it should, and the trees blurred past, rising higher and higher as she went. Soon, they towered over her head, and she paused to look up, noting that the enormous branches and their leaves had blocked out the sun.
Twist of the Fibers (The Lost Prophecy Book 4) Page 19