The Elder Stones Saga Boxset: Books 1-3

by D. K. Holmberg

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  “As ready as I can be.”

  “Take your time.”

  Daniel glanced over at her. “Don’t worry.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “What it means is that if this Slide is anything like the last one, it will be slow, and possibly painful.”

  “Painful?”

  “Not for you, but for me.”

  “Good.”

  “Good?”

  Rayen waved her hand. “I don’t mean it’s good that it’s painful, I just mean that—”

  Daniel laughed softly, taking another deep breath. “You don’t have to explain.”

  With that, he took a step, beginning to Slide.

  It happened much like the last time. They moved slowly at first, though this time there wasn’t nearly as much resistance as he had felt before. He was delayed, as if the stone were trying to hold him back. He had to compensate for it and drew upon more and more strength, surging power through him, forcing himself forward. If he didn’t Slide completely, they could end up in some other place he didn’t intend.

  He wanted to reach Nyaesh and the others. He wanted to be able to speak with Carth about the stone and to have someone analyze it. And he wanted to get back, to rest, and to have a chance to continue to train for the Ai’thol.

  He forced himself forward, tearing through the Slide.

  As he went, sound rang around him. It seemed musical, like voices all singing together, something he hadn’t heard before.

  Always before, there had been the whistling of wind, the sense of movement. While there was some sense of movement now, it wasn’t as profound as what he was accustomed to. It came gradually, without the same pain as when he’d attempted to Slide them free of the ship.

  And then they emerged.

  Daniel blinked, steadying himself as he looked around, half afraid he had not managed to make it all the way to Nyaesh. The city spread into view, the river behind him filled with ships making their way along it, and the distinct odors of Nyaesh—that of ash from the A’ras working with their magic, mixed with a metallic odor he had never fully understood—hung over everything.

  Daniel let out a shaky breath. “We’re back.”

  “I get the sense you weren’t sure that it would work.”

  Daniel glanced over at Rayen. “Not entirely, but it doesn’t matter. We’re back.”

  She glanced down at the stone. “Now we must understand what the Ai’thol have discovered and why it was so important for them to chase after you.”

  “They weren’t chasing after me. They were chasing after the stone.”

  “Then we must understand why the stone is so important.”

  “Will Carth know something?”

  “If she doesn’t, then we need to find someone who does.”

  Daniel looked out at the river. “You go ahead. I’m going to stay here for just a few moments and gather myself.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He took a deep breath. “I’m exhausted, and I just need to rest for a minute. Besides, now that we’re back in Nyaesh, we aren’t in danger like we were.”

  “There’s always danger, Daniel Elvraeth.”

  “I know, but at least here, there’s a certain relative safety.”

  Rayen regarded him for a moment before starting off. He watched her go, marveling at the way the shadows swirled around her, much darker than he remembered having seen before. There was something about the shadows that seemed to call to him, though maybe that was his imagination. Or maybe it was the fact that he found Rayen appealing. The nature of her control and her power attracted him.

  He pushed away those thoughts. He was committed to Lucy, though she had no real interest in him. He would wait until the time when she did, even if it took months. Possibly years.

  Was he willing to wait that long?

  He had left the city for Lucy, but he had remained away from the city for himself. The longer he was gone and the more he saw of the world, the more uncertain he was about what he wanted.

  Maybe Lucy wasn’t what he wanted, but if not, what did he want?

  He took a deep breath, turning away from the city, staring down at the river. He hadn’t been lying to Rayen when he’d said he wanted to stand here and look out at the water, to get a sense for the movement along the shores. There was something peaceful about it, and what he needed after everything that had just happened was a sense of peace.

  If nothing else, he would take this moment, find that peace. It wouldn’t last for long. Soon enough, he would be thrust back into fighting the Ai’thol.

  11

  Lucy

  Waves crashed nearby, and Lucy gazed up the sheer rock wall, looking to see if there was any way for her to know what was out there. She had been exploring, searching along the coastline, looking for answers, and more than that, looking for a place of safety.

  So far, the women had remained in this empty village, a place Lucy had happened upon in her search with Carth. It was the place she had brought them, thinking they might be safe here, but she didn’t want anything more to happen to them and so was looking for other places of safety.

  “How long will you be gone?”

  She looked over to the woman. She had dark hair cut in a jagged and severe manner. A round face with wide eyes that were a pale green. Thin lips pressed together in a questioning line. Lucy smiled, trying to exude a sense of comfort and confidence, knowing most of these women needed that from her.

  “I shouldn’t be gone long,” she said to Marcy. “Besides, you have each other.”

  “Most of us don’t know each other,” Marcy said.

  “This is an opportunity for you to get to know each other.”

  “As much as we want to get to know each other—and we do—especially as we have shared experiences that are important, we need you around us, Lucy.”

  She patted Marcy on the shoulder. Many of the women were like Marcy, and given everything they had suffered, it wasn’t surprising. Some had taken a considerable amount of time to recuperate, and though Carth had wanted Lucy to remain with her, to continue working with the C’than, she had felt compelled to spend as much time as she could trying to find a way to heal these women.

  They had refused to allow her to take them to Elaeavn. That surprised her, especially as some of these women came from Elaeavn. She didn’t know how many, but she had recognized some of them, and the longer she spent with them, the more uncertain she was as to why they wouldn’t want to return to the city.

  There had to be more to it, and yet, she didn’t have the opportunity to stay here long enough to get to the bottom of it. She wanted to better understand these women, but striking that balance was difficult for her. It was a balance between what she wanted to do, what she wanted to understand, and the C’than and what they wanted of her.

  Unfortunately, the more time Lucy spent away from Ras and the C’than, the harder it was for her to return. Eventually, she had to wonder if staying with the C’than was even going to be possible.

  And yet, she felt obligated to work with these women. They were here because of her, and she felt as if they needed her.

  “I won’t be gone long.”

  “Where are you going off to this time?”

  She had hesitated to tell them she was working with the C’than, not sure how they would react. Many of them knew they had been captured by the C’than, and though she had tried to tell them they had been captured by a splinter group, the idea that Lucy might be working with the C’than left many of them troubled.

  If the situations were reversed, she probably would’ve felt the same way, and the more she thought about it, the more certain she was that for now, the best course of action was not sharing with the others what had happened.

  “I’m still looking for a place we can be safe.”

  “Why not here?”

  Lucy looked up along the rocky shoreline, staring up the sheer cliff’s e
dge. From here, it was little more than a Slide to bring her back up there, and yet there were stairs worked into the rock wall that led down here. That was how Marcy had gotten down. Lucy had been surprised to find the other woman here. There was something about Marcy that suggested she came here regularly, looking for answers.

  “I don’t know how safe this place is.”

  “It’s been safe enough so far, and as far as we can tell, no one has come by here. Every so often, we find ships moving past the shore, but nothing more.”

  “No one has traveled nearby?”

  “Why would they?”

  “We’re only a few days from Asador.”

  It seemed impossible to believe that. If she went by ground, she could reach Asador in only a few days’ time. This wasn’t a bad place. There were buildings here, many of them run-down, but in the time they’d been here, they had already begun to repair them, fixing broken windows and generally preparing to remain.

  This wasn’t the kind of place Lucy thought would be safe. Here they were isolated, and in her mind, that wasn’t a good thing. But perhaps after what had happened to these women, isolation wasn’t necessarily a negative to them.

  She didn’t know how she would feel if the situations were reversed. If she had to be isolated like this, what would she do?

  Then again, she had been isolated in Elaeavn her entire life, and the longer she had spent here, the more she felt as if she understood what that isolation was like.

  It was possible that the reason the women from Elaeavn didn’t mind this place was because they were so familiar with isolation. Not all the women were from Elaeavn, and those who were not were the most vocal about not returning to their homelands.

  She looked over at Marcy. “Where is home for you?”

  “Nowhere now.”

  “Why?”

  Marcy touched the back of her head, the same way that most of them did. It was their way of reminding themselves of the implants they had obtained. Lucy understood that all too well, having done the same thing herself, and it was only now that she found she didn’t need to touch the back of her head so often. She still had headaches, though they were less frequent than they once had been. Every so often, she would wake with a pounding headache, almost as if her body were trying to reject the implant, but for the most part she was able to ignore that sensation, and to pretend as if it had never been there.

  “Before all of this happened. Where was home?”

  Some of the women had been more reserved about their answers, and Lucy realized she hadn’t spoken much to Marcy about what was home for her, and now was as good a time as any to get a better understanding of the woman and what she had been like before she had come here.

  “I was from a city called Cort.”

  “I’m not familiar with it.”

  “Not many from Elaeavn are. Then again, there aren’t many people from Elaeavn who leave, are there?”

  “Your parents or your grandparents?”

  Marcy smiled sadly. “My grandparents. My mother was pleased I had such bright green eyes.”

  As far as Lucy knew, abilities faded over time after being away from Elaeavn. No one had ever been able to explain why that was, but it was part of the reason the old punishment of exile mattered so much. It meant that people were away from the influence of the Great Watcher, but also that in time, their abilities would diminish. Perhaps not theirs, but those that they might be able to hand down to their children. It would eventually fade to the point where there was almost nothing left.

  What must that be like?

  So many people had been exiled over the years, and Lucy had a hard time understanding why. Some of the punishments were for very strange reasons, and the more she had learned about the exiles, the more she regretted what her people had done, hating the influence they had.

  “Did you have much in the way of abilities before all this?”

  “I…” Marcy squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath. “I had some ability. Nothing like what my parents say I would’ve had had we never had been forced from Elaeavn, but it was different than anyone else.”

  “What could you do?”

  “I had the ability to understand someone’s thoughts.”

  “Reading,” Lucy said. She tapped her head. “My implant augmented my ability to Read. I got to the point where it’s almost too much. Have you noticed anything like that?”

  Marcy shook her head. “Nothing like that.”

  “Then it’s unlikely to change you that way.” In her case, the shift in her ability to Read had been rapid, almost instantaneous. She remembered awakening with that ability, the way the voices had screamed inside of her mind, making it so she had a difficult time trying to exclude them. With as much as she heard, she could think of nothing else, and it was only through practice that she had begun to ignore those voices and find her own.

  “Some of us wonder what abilities we might get.”

  “It’s possible you won’t obtain anything,” Lucy said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because they were experimenting,” she said. “They didn’t fully understand the nature of the augmentation.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  Lucy breathed out heavily. “I don’t know. There have been adversaries my people have faced over the years. We called them Forgers, but they are known by another name. They have augmentations, but theirs are different. They involve a massive scar somewhere along their face where the metal is implanted.”

  “We know them. Many of them have incredible abilities, to the point where we thought they were from Elaeavn. My parents claimed they were not.”

  “As far as I know, they aren’t from Elaeavn, but that’s not to say that they don’t have similar powers.”

  The Architect certainly had been from Elaeavn, or at least he had descended from there. His abilities were far too much like her own, and with his augmentations, he had been given gifts that made it seem almost as if he were one of the Elvraeth, and yet his abilities were even more than what the Elvraeth possessed.

  Lucy had changed in the same way. With her augmentations, she couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps she was more powerful than any of the Elvraeth. Was there any natural way for someone to have these abilities?

  It was something she wasn’t sure even mattered.

  Now that she had stayed out of the city, she didn’t think she would ever come to know that place again.

  “The Forgers, what we now know are called the Ai’thol, have been using augmentations for many years. This is the first time I’ve ever heard of the C’than using them.”

  “But it’s different, isn’t it?”

  Lucy touched the back of her head, closing her eyes. She could practically hear the voices all around her from the camp up above, and yet they were muted. It took a concerted effort on her part to try to understand more about these women. With her ability to Read, something had changed, almost as if the implant made it difficult for her to reach into their thoughts. She wondered if the metal somehow interfered with her Reading.

  “It is different. I’ve been trying to understand it.”

  “What’s to understand? They have perfected what the Ai’thol started.”

  “I’m not quite convinced that’s the case.”

  “If you say so.”

  Lucy studied Marcy for a little longer. “What else have you noticed since you had the augmentation placed?”

  “I haven’t noticed much of anything.”

  She fell into silence and Lucy didn’t interrupt for a long while, simply listening to the sound of the waves. Eventually, she turned to the other woman. “Did you come down here just to stare at the water?”

  A flush worked over Marcy’s face.

  “What is it?”

  “I didn’t exactly wander down here.”

  “How did you end up here?”

  “I… I don’t know.”

  Lucy frowned, watching the other woman. “You don’t kno
w?”

  Marcy glanced back up the sheer face of rock. “I found myself down here. I don’t really know what happened or how, but I was walking through the village, and then I was here. I was thinking of the water, thinking about how relaxing it sounded, and wondering what it looked like from down here, and then…”

  Lucy started to smile. “That’s called Sliding.”

  “Sliding?”

  Lucy nodded. “That’s how I traveled. And I was able to do it even before my augmentation, but since then, my connection to Sliding has been greater, and I don’t have nearly the same limitations as I had before.”

  “What sort of limitations?”

  “Before, I had a difficult time carrying many people with me, and now… I don’t seem to be limited with carrying others. More than that, I have a way of Sliding where I couldn’t have before.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s complicated, but you mentioned knowing things. I have that same ability, and I have been able to use that and the people I know to latch on to their minds to allow me to Slide with them.”

  “That’s an amazing ability.”

  “I suppose it is,” she said. “Still, it’s unusual.”

  “Can you teach me how to Slide?”

  “I can try, but I’m not sure how effective it will be. I’ve never had to teach someone else. More than that, there is something about Sliding that you need to figure out on your own. I guess you have discovered it on your own, haven’t you?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “I can see if I can help you a little bit, but I don’t know if it will be all that effective for you. I can try, though.”

  Lucy had no idea whether or not it would even matter, no idea whether she could teach someone to Slide the way she could, but having an instructor would be beneficial to Marcy.

  “You’ve already realized the first necessary part of it.”

  “What part is that?”

  “Knowing where you’re going to go. I find it easier to have been there before, but there are tricks around that. There is some danger in not knowing where you’re going, and from what I have heard, some people have ended up in dangerous situations if they don’t know where they’re traveling, and so I would caution you against using this ability if you’re not fully competent with it.”