Thread Skein (Golden Threads Trilogy Book 3)

by Leeland Artra

  “Did you...? I mean, were we just someplace else?”

  With saucer eyes, Ticca nodded.

  “Horses?” he asked.

  Again, she nodded.

  Lebuin examined himself. He seemed fine, except for the glowing. He noted that his clothes were soaked with sweat and sticking to his thick, muscular form.

  I’m more fit than my brother. Ticca wasn’t kidding about that.

  When he looked back at her, she was staring at him, but with a far-off look in her eyes. She held one hand to her face as her fingers lightly touched her lips, then refocused on him.

  “That’s the second time I’ve been somewhere else since getting near the desert.”

  He stood, and waited for more details.

  “The first, I knew instantly I was having a vision or something odd. I was dressed in something unbelievably fine on the tall balcony of a blue marble palace. Ditani’s voice came to me on the wind, and I was back here. Except that I know precisely where that palace is. I can take us there.”

  Lebuin didn’t know what to make of it. “Did we just get ready to go horseback riding?”

  “Yes. And we were talking about telling our fathers something. You kissed me.”

  Lebuin stood taller. “You kissed me a little while ago. I.... Well, I....” He couldn’t get it out.

  “Something happened to you and me. After the Nhia-Samri base, I thought I’d lost you. But more than that, it hurt. Then we found you. And you....”

  Lebuin waited for her to finish the sentence. After a second, her face hardened and she started to straighten up.

  “I what?” he pressed her.

  Ticca pushed herself off the wall and stepped up to him, standing toe to toe. She looked up into his eyes. “You’ve put a spell on me or something. These feelings I have are too intense to be natural. I’ve been fighting them ever since we found you. You put me in a spin. I can’t think straight. I can’t act right when you’re close. I don’t know which way is up. Urdu, I’m not even able to stay mad at you, even though you deserve it!”

  As the distance between them melted away, he felt an intense desire to kiss her again. Her head was tilted up to him, and her eyes locked on his. Like an inescapable gravity, his head started to bend down. They stared into each other’s eyes as sparks seemed to fly between them.

  Just before their lips touched, she pushed away from him violently.

  “NO! I decide my own destiny!”

  “Then what was that?” He waved, indicating the vision. He knew that she knew exactly what he was thinking.

  “I don’t know. But that wasn’t me! It was someone else. I’m not a princess. Maybe it was some spell you did to trick me.”

  He stepped back. “I’d never! I don’t even know if that’s possible. I had nothing to do with that!”

  “You said you smelled horses! You took us there.”

  He sniffed the air, and the musky animal scent was still there. “I do smell horses.”

  Ticca turned around. “I do, too.”

  A tall man wearing a formal uniform rode out of the back of the cavern. He carried a strange torch that didn’t use fire, but created a bright, non-glaring light. As he approached them, he frowned.

  Ticca took a sharp intake of breath and her hand flew to her mouth. She stood straighter, but her face was pale.

  “Your Highness, what are you doing here? This is a dangerous....” The rider’s eyes landed on Lebuin, going wide as his face went white. “Lord Lebuin! You can’t be....” The man and the horse faded, vanishing completely.

  Ticca ran to the spot where the rider had been. Kneeling, she examined the clear horse prints in the dirt. Lebuin stepped up next to her.

  She looked up. “Look! These aren’t just visions. I think they’re real. But what do they mean?”

  A chill ran through him. “Elraci is unstable. This has to do with Elraci. The Gods are afraid of it. They’ve locked it down, because none dare to try to fix it. Both Argos and Lothia were sad that I’d have to learn about it. They felt it might be too much.”

  Ticca stood. “Unstable doesn’t really describe this. Besides, I knew that man.”

  Lebuin raised his brow.

  “Well, it’s no secret. I didn’t meet him in person in Llino, but I have seen him a few times. That was Orahda, the weapons master of Aelargo’s guards.” Her lips tightened and he saw her jaw move slightly. She’s not telling me everything. “He came from what I wanted to show you. They might be connected” she finished.

  She led him to the back of the cavern, where there was a most unusual arch, clearly not natural. It had a black glass-like substance blocking its opening. He felt the truth — the glass was a plug added to prevent passage through it.

  There were no other exits from the room. The arch was the focal point and end of the passage. Lebuin examined it, noting its large size and the carving on the stones. Something about it spoke to him on a level above language. He felt a smug attitude emanating from it. It stood proudly here alone, saying, ‘Yes, they tried to block me, yet I still stand. This place is for me alone.’

  He stepped up to it and felt power. Shifting to mage sight, he saw that the entire archway was an artifact beyond anything he’d studied. It also contained thousands of glass strands, gold wires, and strange silver plates under its surface.

  This is mundane science mixed with magic. Why is this buried in the depths, under this mountain?

  An answer he didn’t like came almost immediately, as he re-envisioned the path there, the twisting tunnel with open caverns. If an explosion happened there, the power would flow out. But at each bend, the power would flow directly into the chamber before traversing through the sharp corners. It was a containment construction. Looking back at the walls, he saw that they also had magical channels.

  The entire tunnel was a blended artifact, strengthened against something this arch could do.

  His fingers itched like never before. He wanted to pull the covers off and get a better look at the technology behind this thing. He leaned in to examine it more closely. A faint tart scent with hints of smoke filled his nose from the construction.

  That’s burnt metal; I know that scent well.

  He looked for burn marks, but there were none. Interconnecting magic formulae created a strange array of hundreds, if not thousands, of independent incantations. An unusual grouping of channels on the right side of the archway ended in a series of circular bands on the surface, like an archery target. In addition to its magical properties, there was a significant amount more mundane crystal circuitry in those bands.

  His fingers brushed one of the circles. Power surged, drawing his hand to the device. His palm struck the artifact and made an unexpected sound of thunder, which echoed into the cavern and passageway. The surface of the artifact did not feel like stone. It was more like a stiff cake. A strong pull on his hand caused it to press into the suddenly fluid stony surface.

  He cried out in shock and terror as magic was ripped from him by the artifact. It had dozens of small tendril channels that pierced his skin and connected to those in his hand. Even more alarming was the feeling of his life being sucked into the archway. Magic flowed from him at a tremendous rate, and he couldn’t stop or slow it.

  ‘ARGOS, NUAS ZI MIL,’ a voice boomed in his mind. It was chilling and deep, yet it felt familiar. It reminded him of the Argos Artifact’s voice, somehow not natural.

  He tried to pull away, but the power holding him was stronger than he was. He could feel the level of force holding his hand growing as his power fed into it. He couldn’t escape.

  Ticca saw his efforts, and realized some of what was happening. She jumped around him to stand between him and the artifact, with her back to him. She grabbed his free arm, wrapping it around her waist, and then placed her back i
nto his chest.

  “Hold me and pull!” she yelled.

  Fear gave him even more strength. He clamped down on her waist as she lifted her feet, putting them on the face of the artifact. She then slammed into him with all her strength as he yanked backwards.

  Pain erupted from every inch of his arm at the pressure. A sharp stab from his wrist and shoulder added to the torture, making him cry out involuntarily. But their combined force worked — his hand tore free, and they fell.

  Ignoring the agony, he untangled himself from Ticca and got his feet under him. Ticca was faster, weapons out she stood defensively facing the device. Lebuin saw that the archway’s intricate designs were glowing. Light, like waves of water, flowed over the entire device. On the left side was something that had to be a control panel, with a set of displays. He knew what it was instantly. Although it was technically the first one he’d seen, he’d read enough descriptions of such technology in the library to no longer be confused by them.

  He stepped over to that side. Ticca practically knocked him back down.

  “Are you insane? Look at your hand!”

  Getting his arm to respond, to lift his hand, was more painful than he thought possible. But it did obey. He held his hand up to examine it. Some kind of clear pink liquid was oozing from a dozen holes in his palm, but it didn’t look like it would be a serious problem. He wondered what it could be, as he watched it slowly stop. His hand didn’t feel bad. Still, he needed to clean it and bandage it soon. Through the drying liquid, he noticed a layer of skin had been peeled off of his palm, revealing tender flesh.

  “I’ll be okay. That was the feeder port. Now that I can see this thing turned on, I know what some of it is. It recognized me...I think.”

  Ticca looked back and forth. He tried to gently push her out of the way. “I need to look at the controls before that energy it took runs out. I don’t think it got enough to work for long.”

  Ticca stood aside, but kept her blades out.

  He stepped to the controls and looked over the displays. All of them, as well as the labels, were in an ancient version of Imperial.

  “This is an Imperial artifact, but it’s a blended technology. It has to be Elracian.”

  Carefully, he touched one of the things he thought was a control for the displays. It changed to show a graph of something. One word caught his attention: Rellums. The graph was an energy level readout. Growing more confident, he touched more of the controls, watching what happened, trying to understand what the device showed him.

  He noted with his magic sight that his original feelings about the black glass plug were right. It wasn’t an original part of the artifact. In fact, it was another magical artifact, now working. It was pulling power from the arch, and sending it somewhere down a conduit that stretched into the distance. Lebuin tried to grab that power and was surprised he could connect to it. With a quick change, he set it up to feed back to him, restoring some of what had been stolen.

  As he examined the archway, he saw that it was collecting magic on its own. It had been designed for continuous operation, but the glass plug was pulling that power away faster than the artifact could collect it. The plug would win the race in a short time, but Lebuin would be fed more than had been taken from him by then.

  Smiling, he turned his attention back to the control panel. After cycling through the readouts, he found one that was a map, which showed no sign of the Circumveni Desert. Instead, the area that represented the location of the desert was labeled Elraci, with dozens of lakes and forests that spanned the entire continent, from east to west. The map showed two highlighted points connected by a line. He guessed the one furthest east was where the team was, assuming they’d headed mostly south from the Nhia-Samri base. It was marked Origin.

  The line that connected the two dots had a label that read ‘503.22 km’.

  That must mean kilometers. Lebuin tried to remember the ancient measuring system taught in the Guild school. If it is, then that’s about 300 miles.

  The line tilted down at a regular angle, making the other highlighted point west-southwest. More interestingly, that point was due north from the star marker for a large city named Imridu-Nam.

  Stepping back, he looked at Ticca. “I think we just found what the Nhia-Samri found. I bet this is a magic gate prototype. According to these controls, it’s connected to something here.” He slid his finger along the line on the map from what he thought was their location, to the other indicated. “I bet another one of these things is there.” He tapped the black glass. “This is a plug designed to keep this thing from working. It might be permanent, or maybe it’s like a cork, meant to be pulled out for testing, only put in to keep everything safely turned off when it’s not being worked on.”

  Looking at the map, Ticca said, “I’ve been taught this language but I don’t recall the distance conversion. Do you know it?”

  “I was taught it in the Guild. If I remember correctly, 500 kilometers would be about 300 miles. Plus or minus a few.”

  Ticca looked at him, and her eyebrows lifted slightly. “Good memory; I think you’re right. So Imridu-Nam is real. Is this the Elracian language?”

  Obviously her family hasn’t forgotten its roots.

  “Not exactly. This is Imperial. It’s the ancient form of it. Languages change over time.”

  Ticca touched the other dot. “So is this our new destination? I was going to try to find Imridu-Nam. I can’t explain why, but I know exactly where it is, and I’m positive the blue marble palace I saw was in the capital.”

  “If this is to scale, Imridu-Nam is about ninety miles south from whatever this is connected to.”

  Shaking her head, Ticca said, “That’s a very, very long way in the kind of conditions we’ll have to travel through in the desert. I’m not thrilled about the 300 miles this seems to suggest we have to go.”

  Checking his levels, he saw he’d gotten a considerable amount of magic from the Nhia-Samri base and from the plug. His expression reflected his satisfaction.

  He touched Ticca’s shoulder and, with the brush of a thought, created a layer of cooling and filtering around her. The amount of power it took to hold that incantation was almost nothing, and he activated a second layer for himself. He had more than enough power to do that for the whole team. It would be a slight draw that wouldn’t matter much if he had to fight, but it might go a long way to redeeming his recent mistakes.

  Ticca’s eyes went wide as she registered the suddenly comfortable climate she was in. She looked down and watched the dirt fall from her like rain. Her shirt became clean and stopped sticking to her, slipping off her skin to hang loosely. She shook her head, and dirt slid from her hair, leaving it bright and fresh. She brushed off the dirt, playing with the falling dust and marveling for a full minute at how it didn’t stick to her hands, before looking up at Lebuin.

  And they thought I was wasting my time with these comfort incantations.

  “How about now?”

  She tried to frown, but couldn’t manage a convincing one. “Are you sure you have the power for this?”

  He nodded, and Ticca’s frown turned into a smirk as she waved a hand at the map.

  “If you can keep this up, then you’re right. We could travel between both in about two days, which isn’t too far, to maybe find what we need. We still have to get there. Which one first?”

  Chapter 9

  Turning of the Tide

  Dohma

  Dohma opened his eyes, which was a mistake. Dirt fell into his left one. Further, the effort yielded no useful information. He was still disoriented and unsure of where he was. He closed his eyes again and tried to move his hand to rub the dirt-filled left eye, but his arm didn’t move. It was pinned in the general direction of his body, and there was an almost crushing weight on him, making it hard to brea
the.

  Slowing down his panic, he took a careful inventory of his body. Toes could wiggle, legs could shift slightly, arms and fingers all felt present. If it wasn’t for the fact that all his limbs were competing for which could scream most about being twisted, bruised, or otherwise injured, he would consider himself in surprisingly good shape.

  He felt like he was upside down, but one arm had been raised to shield his face, and that seemed to be preventing something solid from falling on him, forming an air pocket which smelled of smoke, dirt, and blood. But it could be that the arm was holding him up from falling on his face.

  The smell of blood worried him the most, because it was likely that the strong salty smell, mixing with the dust and dirt, was his own life slowly draining away. He had to get free and take a better look.

  The existence of the air pocket gave him a lot of hope that he would survive. Also, he knew he was far better off than he should be. Electra.... He stopped on her name to bask in the love he felt. Electra had sent him vital healing energies, with the help of his brother and sister. How they’d managed that trick, he didn’t know. Not being prepared to stop living yet, he was thankful for their amazing feat and intensely curious as to how they’d done it.

  Worry about how later, he told himself firmly. I promised I was on my way. Time to get started.

  Concentrating on the feeling that he was head-down in the dirt, he worked his tongue around enough to make a little spittle. Letting it out of his mouth he concentrated to feel where it went. His upper lip felt wetter and then his nose felt a dot of moisture chill. I’m head down. I hope. He tried to move his legs and wiggle backwards praying that was the right direction to get free. It took a few starts and stops, but something fell away from his legs, and they became unhindered.