The Elder Stones Saga Boxset: Books 1-3

by D. K. Holmberg

  She opened her eyes, looking around the library. The lanterns glowed softly, and yet now she was the only one here. At some point while she had been focusing on her memories, he had departed, leaving her alone.

  She worked through those memories, trying to come up with an understanding, and yet she wasn’t sure whether there was anything that she could uncover.

  It was another reason for her to return to Elaeavn.

  The women needed her to return, if only to find more of a way to help them. Until she better understood how to help them reach their abilities, she wasn’t sure whether there was anything she would be able to do.

  As she thought about it, Lucy wondered if she would need to confront her father to learn if there was more to Cara’s death than what Lucy remembered.

  Sitting there for a moment, Lucy wondered if perhaps this was what Ras had wanted. He had told her that she needed to observe herself, and in order to do so, she had found that she had to think almost as if she were trying to Read herself, something that felt strange. The technique might be odd, but she couldn’t deny that it had been effective. She’d never had a recollection of her memories quite like that one.

  Could she find other memories the same way?

  Other than her sister, there had been no memories of her childhood that she thought would be quite as useful to find. There were memories she needed to uncover, though. She thought the time of her captivity, the time after the Architect had claimed her, was important for her to understand, but how was she supposed to do so?

  Her memory of that was so hazy, and she wasn’t even sure where to start.

  Observe herself.

  Ras’s directive drifted back into her mind, but how was she supposed to do so?

  Those answers were buried, and the more she dug, the more she wasn’t sure whether there was any way for her to uncover what she had hidden deep within her mind.

  She could start with something she knew. There were plenty of experiences with the Architect she was certain were accurate, but where to begin?

  Why not start with the first time he had Pushed her?

  That time had been painful, an awareness that her mind was beginning to be pulled away from her, that she was no longer in control. If she could parse that, maybe she could remember what had happened to her and figure out just how much he had used her.

  She had blocked those memories from her mind and hadn’t given them much thought, not wanting to remember what it was like when she had been forced to do what the Architect had wanted.

  The first time she had experienced it was outside of a small village that had been destroyed, making it seem as if Lareth had been responsible.

  That was significant, wasn’t it?

  She tried to remember what he had said to her, but that conversation came back to her faintly, a vague impression rather than anything real.

  It was almost as if the Architect had somehow sealed off those memories from her.

  Knowing the man as she did and knowing the kinds of things he might have done to her, it was possible he had somehow found a way of preventing her from remembering what happened.

  And yet, as she focused on the past, she could feel the way she had been Pushed.

  It was there, a faint sensation. The more she focused on it, the more certain she was that she had been used even earlier than she had believed.

  Even in that village, a place where the Architect had moved lorcith around as if it were nothing, she remembered the influence within her mind.

  Could she trace that influence?

  If she could, maybe she could find something there—buried perhaps, but even buried would be useful to her. If she could find the Architect’s influence within her mind, she might be able to uncover what he had done to her.

  It was there, a vague sensation. The more she thought about it, the more certain she was that she could figure out just what he had done to her.

  He had used her, but then, Lucy had known that.

  Had the visit to the village been real?

  She had never considered that he might have falsified that.

  Lucy traced those memories, Reading herself, forcing herself to think about what she had experienced, flashing back to that time, trying to find out if there was anything there that she might be able to use.

  And as she did, she found… nothing.

  Either he hadn’t influenced her at that point, or his touch was so subtle that she wasn’t even aware of what he had done.

  She focused again, thinking back to what she had experienced, and what she had seen, and when she did, she could feel no influence within her mind.

  That surprised her.

  Lucy dug deeper. She remembered the way the lorcith had been strewn around the village, the way it had been used to destroy everything.

  Why use lorcith?

  She had believed that the Ai’thol had done so in order to blame Rsiran, but what if the Architect had told her the truth, and he really hadn’t had anything to do with what had happened?

  And if not him, then she needed to figure out who else might be responsible. Could the answer to who was responsible be buried within her memories?

  The Architect might have shared that with her, and if he had, then she needed to dig deep enough to know.

  Picking through her thoughts, she worked through them to discern whether there was anything she might be able to uncover about what the Architect had done. The more she thought about it, the less certain she was that she could come up with anything. He had been there, digging through her mind, and yet as she worked, she wasn’t able to figure out what exactly he’d done or how she had been influenced.

  Observe herself.

  Ras’s suggestion drifted back into her mind, and she focused.

  She had to be able to Read something.

  For some reason, this place and time was important to the Architect. He had shown it to her with a purpose, and whether that purpose had to do with his fear of Lareth or whether it was all part of some plan to convince her that Rsiran was responsible, she wasn’t sure.

  The more she focused on this memory, the more certain she was of one fact: the Architect had believed Rsiran was responsible.

  Could Olandar Fahr have planted that memory for the Architect?

  There was another possibility, but it made no more sense to Lucy than anything else.

  What if it wasn’t Olandar Fahr who had done this? What if there was someone else who was responsible?

  It certainly wasn’t Rsiran, but who else would gain from it?

  Someone who tried to pit Rsiran against the Ai’thol.

  Could the C’than have been active for that long?

  Ras suspected that there was another person of power active, but it seemed almost too much for her to believe that one person had been active long enough to have impacted the Architect’s life. And she knew from the Architect that he had suffered and blamed Rsiran for his suffering.

  What if the faction of the C’than had been active long enough to be responsible for what happened to the Architect? If they had, why wouldn’t Olandar Fahr have discovered that before now?

  It was possible that he had known something, though he had been so focused on what had happened with Rsiran that perhaps he had overlooked some other faction working against him.

  Ras wanted her to find out anything she could uncover about the Architect, and maybe this was the key.

  As she focused on the image of what happened, she looked around at the destruction here. There was something about it that troubled her.

  More than anything else, it was different than what she had witnessed with the Ai’thol. Her experience with the Ai’thol hadn’t been of the destruction of villages. They were destructive, and they were deadly, but had she ever seen them use their power like this, in a way that completely destroyed villages and left nothing behind?

  That troubled her.

  Before, she had believed the Ai’thol responsible for this, thinking that the A
i’thol had used this as a way of trying to make it seem as if Rsiran were to blame, trying to build hatred for him.

  Lucy focused on what she had seen. Enormous control over lorcith would’ve been required, a use of power unlike anything she had experienced before.

  Not only was this not Rsiran—there was no doubt in her mind he wasn’t responsible for anything like this, even if it had been a village of the Ai’thol—but it wasn’t the Ai’thol as she had once believed, either.

  This was what the Architect had feared.

  He had feared Rsiran, but he feared Rsiran because he believed him responsible for what had happened to his people and those he cared about. It was understandable given everything he had gone through, and now she realized that he blamed Rsiran without knowing that his blame was misplaced.

  Could the Architect know there was some other power and believe Rsiran worked with this other power? More than that, could Rsiran actually be working with another power?

  The only person Lucy knew of whom Lareth had spent any time working with was Carth, and other than that, she knew very little about what he had been doing. He spent so much of his time outside the city that Lucy had no idea what he was up to.

  Still, what she knew of Rsiran and what she knew of Haern and his family suggested this wasn’t anything Rsiran would do.

  This was something else.

  In order to understand, she had to dig deeper. She tracked through her memories, looking for when the Architect might have begun using her, and she found it.

  It was a trace of a touch, barely enough for her to be aware of, and as she paid attention to it, she realized she could Read past it.

  It was difficult, but the more she focused, the more certain she was that she could find her way beyond what had been done to her. As she Read beyond that, she saw what had been done.

  It happened in a flash.

  Memories tumbled through her mind, everything she had experienced in the time that she had been Pushed pouring back into her. She would have to work through them, trying to understand what had happened to her, to figure out just what it meant, but the more she thought about it, the more certain she was that she was right and that she had removed the influence of the Push.

  What had the Architect had her do?

  As she worked through those memories, she had visions of others that flashed through her mind.

  She had thought the Architect had used her to make it seem as if she were responsible for attacking other villages, to make it seem as if people of Elaeavn had been the ones to have attacked, but that wasn’t the case.

  He had used her to hunt down Rsiran.

  Hadn’t there been memories of violence?

  They were gone now.

  Those memories had been placed there by the Architect.

  Why?

  The more she focused, the more she realized that wasn’t even the case.

  The touch was subtle, and yet it was definitely there. What had happened to her was a Push, someone placing a memory, forcing her to believe that she had been responsible for something she hadn’t done at all.

  Lucy’s breath caught.

  Everything she had thought had happened because of the Architect and the Ai’thol was wrong.

  That didn’t mean the Ai’thol were blameless. Far from it. It only meant that someone else was out there, someone who was trying to make it seem as if she were working on their behalf, someone who wanted her to believe that the Ai’thol were terrible. Who would do so, and why?

  She searched through her memories, trying to Read them, but wasn’t able to determine who was responsible for it and how it had been done.

  She would need to work through her thoughts more, would need to try to Read her thoughts in order to better understand what had happened and how, but for now, all that mattered was that she had them back.

  Her memories were once again her own.

  There had been an element of torment, and the Architect had used her, Pushing on her, forcing her to serve, but he had also tried to teach her.

  That was the part of all of this that surprised her the most. She wasn’t expecting to have learned from him, and yet he had wanted her to better understand her abilities.

  There was one particular memory that came drifting to the surface.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” she had asked.

  “Because you need to have control.” He paced in front of her, and she recognized the cell where she’d been held. She thought she had been there in between attacks, but that hadn’t been the case at all. She hadn’t gone anywhere.

  Whoever had placed those memories within her mind had come from the Ai’thol.

  “Why do you care if I have control?”

  “Because I need to know if it’s possible,” he said.

  “Whether what is possible?”

  “Whether control is even possible.”

  Lucy turned away from him. Now that she remembered it, she remembered how strong she had thought herself, how hard it had been for her to turn away from the Architect. Even then she had begun to Read him, and it was possible she knew more about the Architect than she was aware of. He didn’t have the same type of augmentation as she did and wasn’t able to protect his mind from her.

  Rather than knowing all of his thoughts, she was only aware of his amusement. It surprised her that he would be so amused with her, and yet, his mirth seemed to stem from her stubbornness more than anything else.

  All this time she had believed that he had been responsible for hurting her, and yet now that she had her memories back, she had no sense of that from him.

  Perhaps he hadn’t done anything to harm her. If so, then she needed to better understand why he had been working with her, and what he’d wanted from her.

  Control.

  “Why would you fear it’s not?”

  “Because this is different than the blessings we place.”

  “Blessings?” She spun to face him, crossing her arms over her chest. It was a moment of defiance she wasn’t sure she was strong enough to maintain, and yet she had done it. Even now, Lucy felt proud of herself.

  “You may not view it the same way.” He ran his hand below his chin, tracing the scar that was there. “But trust me when I tell you we do. We understand the value of the blessing, and just how much it means that we have been granted the opportunity to take it on.”

  “Then why do you care if I have any sense of control?”

  “Because what was done to you is different. I would like to know if it’s so different that it’s not useful to us.”

  “Why would you think it wouldn’t be useful?”

  “Because if you can’t gain the control that you need, then you are of no value to the Great One.”

  “He’s not so great.”

  “He’s much greater than you can ever imagine,” he said.

  “What makes him so great?”

  “If you want, I could bring you before him. I’m sure he would be interested in knowing how you have been used. I’m certain he would be interested in helping you understand your blessing.”

  Lucy had touched the back of her head, something she still did. “It’s not a blessing.”

  “Only because you don’t understand it. In time, I’m sure you can begin to, and when you do…”

  Lucy had turned away again, and this time, she made a point of ignoring him. She suspected it angered him, but she didn’t care. All that mattered was that she ignored him, ignoring what he was trying to do to her and the way he was trying to use her.

  The only problem was, she wasn’t sure how she could fully disregard him.

  When he left her, she found herself staring at the wall. He had wanted her to have control, and part of that was allowing her to master her ability to Read, and to do more than just that. He wanted her to be able to Push.

  That surprised her, but she could feel it even now, even in the memory, aware of how he had wanted her to have that ability.

  What surpri
sed her even more was the fact that he wasn’t worried about her having the ability to Read or to Push. Not only had he wanted her to have it, but he’d wanted her to have enough control to be of use. The Architect believed that when she did, she would be useful to Olandar Fahr.

  There were so many memories for her to sort through. She had been captured by the Architect for a long time, and in all that time, it was possible she had gained knowledge from him. That knowledge would be useful to her even now, a way for her to not only know what the Ai’thol and Olandar Fahr were planning, but also to better comprehend how they had wanted to use her.

  More than that, it would help her better understand what else might be responsible for what had happened.

  Here she had thought they only had to worry about Olandar Fahr, but what if there were two factions that were equally dangerous—and they were caught in the middle? It meant people she cared about could be squeezed by both sides. And it meant many people in the world might suffer because of this pursuit of power.

  Lucy looked around the inside of the library, and for the first time since coming here, she thought she really understood what Ras had wanted of her. He wanted her to observe herself, but what he really wanted was for her to reach into those memories, to learn whether there was anything stored there that might be useful for them, a way for them to uncover the real truths.

  And if she could, the C’than might be able to continue to act in the way that they had for centuries. Ras had said the C’than maintained balance, yet she had never really understood it before. If there really was another opponent at play, finding this balance was of critical importance.

  Lucy breathed out. In order for her to do all of that, she would have to know herself.

  She might have freed the memories she had lost when trapped by the Ai’thol, and she might now have that part of her back, but that didn’t mean she knew what she needed to do.

  The more she thought about it, the more certain she was there was something buried she needed to find. It involved her knowing herself as Ras had said.

  There was only one way for her to know herself.

  Lucy shifted in her seat, looking around the library. The lanterns glowed with a soft light, no longer as bright as they had been. It was as if Ras had turned the light down enough to give her the opportunity to dig within herself.