The Elder Stones Saga Boxset: Books 1-3

by D. K. Holmberg

  Perhaps that was the lesson he wanted to teach her. She had to use her abilities, regardless of how invasive they might be to others, to gain the understanding she needed to ensure the people she wanted to provide care for had what they needed.

  As she dug, she found barriers. Lucy continued to try to push, but the more she did, the more barriers she reached, and ultimately, she could go no further.

  It was almost as if Ras had allowed her in, but only so far; beyond that, she wouldn’t be able to find him.

  Holding on to her connection to his mind, she Slid.

  She emerged in a room.

  It was a nicely appointed room, a comfortable-looking bed along one wall, a table against another. A wardrobe rested along a third, and next to the wardrobe was a low doorway.

  Ras stood at the doorway, watching her.

  “I wondered how long it would take you,” he said.

  He closed the door behind him, sealing it with his power.

  She wouldn’t be able to Slide beyond it, and she suspected this was a door he had actually locked.

  “It was a test.”

  “I thought it prudent to perform a basic test.”

  “Why?”

  “Consider it my way of testing your thinking.”

  “Why?” she asked again.

  Ras turned to her, smiling. “Because I chose to.”

  “That’s no answer.”

  He took a seat at the table, looking up at her. “It’s all the answer you need, Lucy Elvraeth. You came to the C’than to learn, and yet you continue to disappear. You have been holding on to these new abilities of yours and forgetting the one piece of yourself that made you powerful.”

  “What piece is that?”

  He tapped her on the chest. “Your heart.”

  Lucy shook her head. “My heart isn’t what matters. All that matters is trying to better understand how to Slide, using my ability to Read, and being prepared for anything the Ai’thol might do.”

  Ras sighed. “If that’s what you believe, then it is unfortunate.”

  “Why?” She felt like a fool asking the same question over and over again, but there was something about Ras that made her feel like a fool. And there was something about him that left her knowing she should be asking different questions, though she had no idea what questions those should be. He didn’t intend to cause her any harm, and the longer she spent around him, the more certain she was that he wanted nothing more than to ensure her safety, but that was different from helping to train her. That was the entire reason she had come here, thinking she would learn something from him. What was she learning, other than that he would put her into rooms that were not locked, separating her from her abilities? They’d had some conversations over the last few weeks, but nothing more.

  “What have you experienced when it comes to the Ai’thol?”

  “I’m sure Carth has told you.”

  “Carth has, but I’m asking you what you experienced.”

  Her hand went to the back of her head, rubbing the spot where the implant had gone in. It was throbbing this morning, and she found that rubbing it seemed to help a little bit, but not entirely. Each time it throbbed, pulsing in the back of her mind, she couldn’t help but feel as if she needed to do something to remove that pain, but she had no way of doing so.

  Even the Healers weren’t able to help her, though she didn’t necessarily want the Healers to do anything for her. At this point, it was better that she continue to have her augmentation, using it to work with the women and do whatever she could to help oppose Olandar Fahr and the Ai’thol.

  “Torment,” she whispered.

  “So you say, but was your torment at the hands of the Ai’thol?”

  She frowned, meeting Ras’s eyes. “The Ai’thol are responsible for what happened.”

  “The Ai’thol are responsible for much, but when it comes to what happened to you,” Ras said, pointing to her, “I’m not convinced they are to blame. As much as you might want to give them that credit, I don’t know that we can.”

  Lucy thought about the Ai’thol and about what she had experienced. What she had suffered at their hands had been minimal. They had attacked in Elaeavn, but some of that had been because of Lareth. How much of what the Ai’thol had done had been a reaction to someone else?

  What she had experienced in Asador had been more than a reaction, hadn’t it?

  They had been after power. They wanted the wisdom stone.

  And now?

  Lucy no longer knew what the Ai’thol were after. They had gone to Nyaesh, looking for the power of the Elder Stone there, and there had been considerable attacks, but she had found the C’than far more worrisome within Nyaesh.

  “I see that you aren’t certain.”

  “That’s your point? You want me to realize that the Ai’thol aren’t what I believed?”

  “On the contrary, Lucy Elvraeth. The Ai’thol are exactly what you believed. All I’m trying to do is get you to think through things and realize there are more aspects at play here than what you have long told yourself. Your people like to believe there is only one threat, and yet, in a world like the one we live in, there is never only one threat.”

  “What other threats are there?”

  “That is the purpose of the C’than.”

  “That’s all you’re going to tell me?”

  Ras smiled at her. “Unfortunately, that’s all I can tell you.”

  He turned back to his desk, and he pulled some papers in front of him, flipping through them. Lucy watched him for a moment before getting annoyed and moving around so that he was forced to look at her.

  “And that’s the purpose of the C’than? That’s the purpose of everything that happened to bring me here?”

  “Not at all,” Ras said, not looking up.

  “Then what is it?”

  “It is for you to learn to observe.”

  “Observe?”

  Ras smiled, clasping his hands over the stack of papers. “When you were in that room, what did you experience?”

  “You trapped me there.”

  “Did I trap you there?”

  She frowned, cocking her head to the side. “No.”

  He shook his head. “You were not trapped. You might have believed you were based on what you saw, but when you allowed yourself to actually observe, you began to understand you were not trapped at all.”

  “That’s your lesson?”

  He smiled at her. “You’ve already made it clear that you don’t want to learn Tsatsun, and perhaps Tsatsun isn’t the right way to teach you.”

  “You don’t think I have the talent?”

  “I don’t think you need to have the talent,” Ras said.

  He turned his attention back to the pages, going through them. Lucy looked over his shoulder but was unable to read anything on them; she wondered if that wasn’t the point. Perhaps this was another test, some other way for him to determine what she might be able to observe. As she stared at them, she didn’t notice any patterns or anything special about them. It was possible there was nothing there for her to even be able to determine.

  “How am I supposed to observe?”

  “That is something I can teach you.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Are you going to begin teaching me?”

  “Everything is a lesson, Lucy Elvraeth. Have you not seen that?”

  “A lesson, now, and not a test?”

  “There will be tests. Part of your time here demands there be tests, but there will be more than just tests. You will be challenged to observe.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s necessary. Because in observing, you gain an understanding. And in order for us to do what we must, understanding needs to come first.”

  “You want to understand the Ai’thol?”

  “I think we need to understand why Olandar Fahr is taking the action he is.” Ras stuffed the papers back together, and she coul
dn’t tell if there was a hint of disappointment edging the corners of his eyes. Was she supposed to have discovered something from that stack of papers? She wasn’t able to read them, and so she couldn’t tell anything from them. “Before we think that we can find a way to stop them, we first must understand him. If we know what he’s after, then we will be able to defeat him.”

  “I thought he was after power.”

  “If he were after power, it would have been less challenging for him to claim by now. Given how long he’s been active, and the nature of power that he has already acquired, I believe there is something more to it.”

  “Why?”

  She really needed to be asking different questions, but around Ras, she felt like a child, like when she had first gone to the library in Elaeavn. The caretakers had treated her delicately, and it had taken her time to grow into her role, to take on more and more responsibility and become useful within the library.

  If there was something she could learn from Olandar Fahr, then she would need to continue to work at it, and yet how would she be able to do so?

  She hadn’t even seen him yet.

  Only, she had seen someone who had seen him.

  Her experience with the Architect gave her an advantage others lacked—the opportunity to better know what Olandar Fahr might be thinking.

  Ras watched her, almost as if he knew what she was thinking.

  “You wanted me here because of my captivity with the Architect.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Because I have a perspective you needed.”

  “And what perspective do you think that is?”

  “A perspective others have not had.”

  Ras smiled at her. “You are correct. Your time with the Architect gave you a unique perspective. We have not had much exposure to Olandar Fahr, certainly not enough to feel confident in being able to know what he’s planning, and because of that, we have struggled to know what he might do next. Having someone who does have some experience with him, who does know what he might be thinking, is valuable.”

  “I don’t have much insight into the Architect’s thinking.”

  “You have more than you know.”

  Lucy thought back to her time in captivity. There had been no opportunity for her to really know the Architect, had there?

  She had been working on trying to gain a better understanding of her abilities, and in doing so, she had been trying to shut out some of the noise of the voices, and yet, as she had done so, she had found it more difficult than she had expected. The voices had been overwhelming to her, to the point where she had heard them as a jumble.

  How much of them—if any—came from the Architect?

  What she had experienced with the women in the village suggested that those with augmentations like hers weren’t people that she could Read, and yet, the Architect didn’t have an augmentation like hers. His was a traditional Forger augmentation, one she’d thought she would be able to find some way beyond.

  And she had, hadn’t she?

  He had managed to Push her, but that had been before, when she was still trying to understand her abilities, and before the implant had fully taken hold. Since then, she had succeeded in getting free.

  Could the timing of her freedom matter?

  Could it be tied to the fact that the implant had fully absorbed?

  Lucy breathed out, looking at Ras. He was watching her, and there were some of the same questions in his eyes.

  “You want me to observe myself.”

  “We must understand ourselves before we can know others, Lucy Elvraeth.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then you decide, Lucy Elvraeth.”

  “I thought you wanted me to work with the C’than.”

  “What makes you think this is not working with the C’than?”

  She sighed again, and once more, she couldn’t help but feel as if there was something she missed, but what was it?

  Perhaps that was what Ras wanted her to discover. If it was all tied to her understanding herself and trying to grasp something along these lines, then she needed to determine what it was. And if it was a matter of her observing herself, given everything that she had gone through, now was the time to do so.

  “What about Olandar Fahr?”

  “Eventually, we will need to turn our attention to him. There is more than what we know.”

  “What more?”

  “I suspect he is not the only one after power.”

  21

  Lucy

  Marcy flickered throughout the village, Sliding. She did so in short bursts, and then stopped. Each time she managed to Slide, Lucy smiled to herself, pleased the other woman succeeded, wondering whether she would be able to keep it up if it came down to it. It was one thing to be able to Slide in situations like this, and quite another to do so under pressure. Then again, did she want these women to know what it was like to deal with pressure? Didn’t they deserve more safety than that?

  If it were up to Lucy, they wouldn’t have to deal with anything else. They had been through enough already, and the more they had to be exposed to, the more dangers that existed, the more she began to wonder whether there was any way for them to remain safe.

  The village was safe.

  She looked around. The homes in the village were much warmer than they had been when she’d first come across it. Smoke drifted from several chimneys. The smell of baking bread and other foods mingled with the sea air, and there was a scent of happiness. Contentment. The women had made this place their own.

  It hadn’t even taken that long. They had been here for only a few weeks, and in that time, they had already begun to settle in, taking what had been little more than a series of homes and turning them into an organized settlement. Lucy had secured paint, Sliding it back here, and a fresh coat had been applied to many of the buildings, with others in progress.

  Despite all that, she couldn’t shake the sense that something more needed to be done. She’d gone with Carth, moved those strange stones out of the water, and returned here. Seeing the impact of those stones had reinforced her need to do more, but she wasn’t quite sure what that was.

  These women all counted on her to provide them with some protection, and the longer she was here, the more she thought she owed them. She had been working with them, trying to train them, and thinking she should be able to find some way to ensure they received the necessary knowledge to understand their abilities. The entire affair held an undercurrent of darkness, the edge of what they had gone through, that torment that they had experienced that left her not quite certain. They deserved better, and they certainly deserved more than what they had encountered so far.

  For her part, Lucy wondered when she would have to reveal this place to Carth. The other woman had asked her, and Lucy had demurred so far, thinking she would keep it to herself, partly because she didn’t want to reveal it to Carth yet. If she did, she worried that Carth would try to use them. She didn’t need to Read Carth in order to know how the woman would want to use them, and even if she could, she suspected Carth would have some way of hiding what her plans were.

  It was something that troubled Lucy quite a bit.

  “You’ve returned,” Eve said, approaching from the water’s edge.

  Lucy turned toward the woman. Of all of the people here, Eve had more of an edge to her. She needed to get to the bottom of that. Perhaps Ras’s lesson applied even here.

  “I told you I would.”

  “Each time you leave, we wonder if we’ll see you again.”

  “I thought I’d come back often enough that shouldn’t even be a question anymore.”

  “Shouldn’t it?”

  Lucy studied Eve and forced a smile. “Have you uncovered anything?”

  “I keep trying to use this metal like you told me to, but nothing seems to work.”

  “It’s not that I told you to use metal. I told you it’s possible your ability would be tied to the
metal.”

  “That doesn’t appear to be the case.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Then what ability do I have?”

  “Unfortunately, it’s possible you won’t have any ability.”

  Eve glared at her. “Why not?”

  Lucy resisted the urge to touch the back of her head, to draw attention to her own implant. Eve’s implant was in a similar location to hers, though not all of the women’s were. Something about the placement of the implant seemed to matter as much as the woman who received it. There had to be some aspects to it that Lucy didn’t fully understand, and the longer she was around them, the more uncertain she was that she would be able to determine the difference. If Rsiran Lareth were here, he might be able to help her better understand the nature of the metal. Even Haern might be able to help, but she had not gone to them. Going to them meant asking for help. And it meant revealing the presence of the village. What did it say about her that she wouldn’t even consider returning to Elaeavn to ask someone who had a better understanding of the matter at hand?

  Could she be too stubborn?

  She never would have believed that about herself before, but maybe she was avoiding it. Or it could be that there was another reason, and it was less about what she was avoiding and more about what she feared might happen if she went to Elaeavn for help.

  If she wanted to help these women—really help them—she needed to find answers, regardless of where she would have to go for them.

  It was something she hadn’t considered much, but now that she was here looking at Eve, she couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps that was the right strategy. If she went to Elaeavn, asked for help from those who might understand the nature of what they were trying to do, she might be able to better understand the injury that had occurred.

  There was another reason for her to go. Someone within the city was responsible for what had happened to her.

  Daniel believed it might be his father, but even if it wasn’t, she thought she needed to try to discover who had willingly sacrificed her to the C’than. Whoever it was obviously cared very little about the people of Elaeavn.

  “What have you been able to do?”