The Elder Stones Saga Boxset: Books 1-3

by D. K. Holmberg

  What did he want her to learn?

  That was the question that plagued her, and the more she thought about it, the more certain she was that she needed to answer that first; only then would she be of use to the C’than—if that was what she wanted to do.

  To find herself, she was going to have to go back to Elaeavn.

  Perhaps she might finally have answers as to what had happened to her sister, why her sister had been lost. Even if she didn’t, would it matter? Did that mean that Lucy couldn’t find herself?

  She didn’t think so. More likely, going back to Elaeavn would only open more questions.

  There was another reason for her to go, and if she did it, it would not only be for herself, but for the women in the village.

  Lucy took a deep breath, focused, and Slid.

  31

  Lucy

  Lucy emerged at the edge of Elaeavn, standing in a small courtyard. She had chosen this place for the same reason she had often been drawn to it when she was in the city, as it was a place where she and her sister had spent time, a way of being out of the palace, away from the watchful eyes of her mother, and away from her father and his temper.

  It was something he had tried to hide, but he was never all that skilled at hiding his anger. In the time since she’d left the city, Lucy had forgotten about it—until Ras had forced her to think inward.

  The city felt no different than the last time she had been here.

  For some reason, Lucy had expected things to be changed, but then, perhaps that was only because she had changed so much that she expected everything to change along with her. She no longer was tied to the city, though she had never truly been attached to it. With her ability to Slide, she had been able to leave at any point, but it had taken an accident and the attack for her to muster the strength. Even that hadn’t been her strength. It had been the strength of others on her behalf.

  The courtyard had a few statues within it, though most of them were cracked and crumbling. Parts of the city had changed over time, rebuilt and modified, bringing back the splendor that had once been here. The city was old, and in time, stone changed, fading, cracking, and new sculptures appeared, an attempt to revitalize things.

  But not in all parts of the city. Some parts were left to squalor, and strangely, she found that many of those places were some of the more important parts of the city.

  This square was one of them.

  Parts of the square had been rebuilt, as if those who had once spent time here had known it would be important to have this place, but others were not, and she had always found it interesting how there were new sculptures mixed with the old. It was the old ones that always drew her eye.

  Lucy took a deep breath, letting it out, and wandered out of the square onto the street. Elaeavn surrounded her.

  The city itself was unique, set along a seaside that stretched up to a peak. There was Lower Town, a part of the city that once had been more run-down and decrepit, but over the last few years it had become revitalized, with people choosing to move there. Shop owners had begun to migrate from the Upper Town down to Lower Town. It was one of many changes that Lucy had observed herself over the last two decades, watching as shops she had once visited with her parents when she was young had left the Upper Town, moving away from the palace—and the Elvraeth.

  As with any change, that had angered her father.

  Lucy had never fully understood it, though she suspected it had something to do with diminishing the authority of the Elvraeth. As he sat near the Council, and he had hoped he would one day sit upon the Council, he didn’t want any change that would diminish the authority of the Elvraeth Council as they ruled over Elaeavn.

  Unfortunately for her father, the people of the forest had changed the dynamics. Many within the city looked to Rsiran and Jessa now, viewing them as de facto rulers, and because of that, the Council was viewed by many as merely a way of trying to mitigate Rsiran and Jessa’s authority.

  She glanced up toward the palace. From where she stood, the illusion of it floating was diminished, but it still jutted out from the rock, and from certain angles it would seem as if it floated completely.

  Even though she didn’t want to go to the palace, that was where she needed to visit.

  Eventually, she would need to question her parents. In order to know herself and to verify what she had observed, to find those answers, to uncover what Ras wanted her to uncover, she thought she needed to do so, but there was another way to get the answers she needed.

  It didn’t involve going to them or others of the Council. Not yet, at least.

  Eventually it would. The longer she thought of it, the more certain she was that she would have to challenge the Council. Given what had happened to her, and the likelihood that some of the Council had been involved in the attack on Rsiran, there would have to be an intervention. She wasn’t sure whether it would be from her or from Daniel, or perhaps it would even involve Cael Elvraeth.

  One thing she could do was go to the library.

  She focused, Sliding into the palace.

  There was a time when thinking about Sliding in the palace was beyond her. The heartstone should have limited her, but the stronger she grew with Sliding, the more she began to realize there weren’t that many things that would prevent her from using her ability. Ras managed to do so, though he was tied to the power of an Elder Stone in a way that she didn’t fully understand. It was possible Ras was unique.

  She didn’t even need an anchor in order to Slide beyond the protections built around the palace. She emerged outside the library and hesitated. She could have Slid all the way into the library, but doing so might have brought her face-to-face with one of the caretakers before she was ready. She didn’t fear the caretakers, but she did know they weren’t thrilled when she Slid into the library, partly because they were suspicious of the ability the same way that people of long ago had been.

  Pushing open the door, she stepped inside.

  The scent of the library was distinct. It was that of the mustiness of books hundreds upon hundreds of years old. There were centuries of records, most of them depicting the time of Elaeavn, describing the Elvraeth out of a need to determine who had the right to rule. There was a whole section of the library depicting who was related to who, and in many of those works, there was a debate about which of the families were most senior. All claimed they were Elvraeth in order to rule.

  When she had been here before, she had viewed the library as impressive and enormous. She’d believed that very few places would ever be able to rival the library, thinking that serving as a caretaker in Elaeavn would have been a noble profession. Having been to the library in the tower of the C’than stronghold, and having heard of the library in Asador, she no longer believed it was quite as impressive. More than that, the works collected here were all tied to the Elvraeth and to Elaeavn, whereas the works in other places related to the rest of the outside world, connecting things in a way that Elaeavn never had.

  It was a shame, really. Elaeavn had remained isolated for so long that they had never really understood how they could—and should—be a part of the outside world.

  Perhaps there were answers as to why that had been the case.

  If there were, they were probably buried in some of the oldest sections of the library.

  “Can I help… Lucy Elvraeth!”

  She turned to Jamis. He was a thin caretaker, impossibly old, and had been pleasant. Of all the people who had been here, he was one who had always offered her a certain level of help. It was because of him that she’d had a future as a caretaker at all. If not for him, she might never have been granted a position, and though she no longer wanted that, she still had a fondness for him.

  “You’ve been missing.”

  “I was never missing,” she said.

  “No? You aren’t one of the lost?”

  Lucy frowned. “The what?”

  Jamis waved his hand. “It doesn’t really matter.�
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  “It does. What were you getting at?”

  He got up from his table and tottered over toward her, maneuvering between the tables. “Nothing other than the fact that there have been reports of missing throughout Elaeavn.”

  Lucy’s heart began to flutter a little faster. Could it be as easy as that? She had come here, wanting to find out what she might be able to uncover about the women who had been abducted by the C’than, and the first thing she did when coming to the library would reveal what she needed? It seemed almost impossible to believe that it would be so easy, and yet here Jamis was, telling her about others who had been lost.

  “And you call them the lost?”

  “Perhaps there needs to be a better title, and perhaps if you have returned, then they will as well. Many believe that they weren’t really lost.”

  “How many are missing?” What if there were more than those she knew about? What if she hadn’t found everyone she needed? That would mean she wasn’t finished with finding the remnants of the C’than.

  “We aren’t sure of the extent of the missing, but the likelihood is that there are dozens,” he said.

  Lucy stood fixed in place. Dozens. That fit with what she had experienced, and it fit with the numbers she had found outside the city, women who had been trapped by the C’than.

  “Are they all women?”

  Jamis pressed his lips together in a tight frown. “No. That would be odd, wouldn’t it?”

  Lucy sighed. If they weren’t all women, then what had happened to the men?

  It was more that she had to uncover. With everything she had gone through, everything she had experienced, she thought there had to be some way for her to find the key to what had happened to these lost, but she wasn’t sure where even to start.

  “When did they start going missing?”

  “The lost have been gone for months.”

  Months. That fit with her experience.

  “I wish there was something we could do for them. Many of the parents suffer, and if it weren’t for having each other, they might be even worse off.”

  “What do you mean that they have each other?”

  “The mothers gather.”

  “Where?”

  “Why, at the Garden of the Servants.”

  Servants of the Great Watcher were the closest thing Elaeavn had to religion. She knew exactly where that would be.

  She thought about the women she knew who had been captured, and if the family members missed them as much as how Jamis made it sound, it seemed to Lucy they should return to Elaeavn. But none of them had wanted to do so.

  It was difficult to understand the reason why, but she suspected many of the women had been altered so much they didn’t feel as if they belonged in Elaeavn any longer. Lucy understood that.

  “They believe the servants can ask the Great Watcher for assistance.”

  Lucy looked around the inside of the library, and once again, she couldn’t help but feel how small everything was. It was so different than when she had worked here, so different than when she had believed it to be a place of enormous power. The longer she was here, the more she felt aware of just how she had changed. It wasn’t that this place had altered, but she had been through so much.

  “Thank you, Jamis.” He smiled at her, and Lucy stepped out of the library, leaving him. She debated Sliding off to the Garden of the Servants but decided otherwise. From here, she had to find out whether or not what she had observed of herself, the way she had looked inside, was real.

  Lucy Slid, emerging within her childhood room.

  The room was little different than what she remembered. There was a bed and a wardrobe. Within the wardrobe, she suspected she’d find her clothing. The bed had stacks of boxes upon it. More boxes were along one wall. The table Lucy had used to study was taken up as well.

  Her parents had moved on.

  Then again, they must have thought that she was lost, and if so, they likely doubted she would ever find her way back.

  She stepped over to the door, pulling it open. As she did, she half expected to find her parents, but they weren’t here.

  Perhaps it was better that they weren’t.

  The main room of their quarters was relatively large compared to some within the palace. Her father was a fairly senior man within the branch of the Elvraeth, and because of that, they were given rooms that were nicer and larger than many others. The hearth was dark, and she approached it slowly, hands raised, feeling for any hint of warmth that might suggest they had been here recently, but there was nothing.

  She turned her attention to the shelves. Like many of the Elvraeth, her father had bookshelves stuffed full of various books on different topics. For the most part, she suspected her father did so as a way of looking more cultured than he was. It was all about perception. With her father’s position within the Elvraeth, he was often the one to host certain meetings, and because of that, there would be others within this room who her father would want to impress.

  Lucy skimmed the shelves, looking for any sort of information that might help her, but came up with nothing.

  Then again, that wasn’t the reason she had come here.

  If only there was some way to know more about what her parents might have done. The longer she thought about it, the more she realized something. She’d come here wanting to know whether she could trust her own observations, thinking that she should question her parents about what she had remembered of her sister, but why would she even need to do that? Was there anything in what her parents might tell her that would convince her that she was right?

  More than anything, she remembered how they had treated her, the way they had belittled what had happened, to the point where she was the one who had felt the most guilt at losing her sister.

  It wasn’t to say they didn’t mourn her loss. They did, but they also blamed Lucy to a certain extent. Perhaps the key for Lucy was not in asking others to help her determine whether what she observed was accurate, but in trusting herself.

  How would Ras feel about that?

  Lucy looked around the room again. It had been so long since she’d spent any time here, and even longer since this place had been home—really home.

  It was no longer home to her, and she wasn’t sure if it ever could be again. The longer she was here, the more certain she was that this place was not for her anymore.

  Taking a deep breath, she focused on the distant sense of the tower. And then she Slid.

  32

  Daniel

  The center of the clearing contained the forge, taking up a large portion in the center of the Elder Trees. It was quiet at this time of day, the forge not yet up and running, and no smoke emerged from the chimney as it had the last time he’d been here. He stood before the door, feeling uncertain.

  “Are you going to go in?” Rayen asked.

  Daniel stared at the door. It was solid oak, weathered from its time out in the open within the clearing, and stained almost black. If they were able to convince Neran to come with them, Daniel wasn’t sure whether he’d be able to offer as much insight as they needed. “I worry we’ll disappoint Carth.”

  Rayen laughed softly. “Carth won’t be disappointed. I doubt you could ever disappoint her.”

  Daniel cocked a brow. “What do you mean by that?”

  “What I mean is that she holds you in esteem, Daniel Elvraeth.”

  He held her gaze for a moment before turning back to the door, knocking, and waiting. After a moment, the door opened slowly and Neran stood on the other side. He was dressed in a weathered shirt and pants. His hair was balding, and moderate green eyes looked out at Daniel, wrinkles deepening along the corners.

  “Can I help you?” He glanced from Daniel to Rayen.

  “I’m Daniel Elvraeth, Master Neran. We came with a request. We have need of someone who has a knowledge of metals.”

  “I take it you need this because of her.” He nodded to Rayen. “Were you the one who left with
Lucy Elvraeth?”

  “I did.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Off working on something important.”

  “More important than trying to uncover how to remove the implant the Forgers placed?”

  “She’s come to terms with the fact that that will be unlikely. Now she has moved on to acceptance.”

  Neran frowned and scrubbed a hand across his face. “What is the request?”

  “There is a strange metal alloy the Forgers are using.”

  Neran’s gaze drifted toward the Elder Trees. The metal embedded within the bark gave the trees something of a shimmery appearance. That was the source of the strange energy Daniel had detected, though as far as he knew, even Rsiran hadn’t known the purpose of the metal.

  “They have always used a strange metal,” Neran said.

  “They have, but they have begun to vary their approach. There’s one they have recently begun to use that prevents Sliding.” It was a gamble sharing that with Neran. The other man might feel much the way that many of the older people from Elaeavn felt about Sliding—the same way his father felt about it.

  “That ability is all that keeps us safe.”

  He breathed out a relieved sigh. “Without it, the Forgers have an easier time of trapping those of us who oppose them.”

  Neran scanned the inside of the trees. “There is nothing I’ve been able to do with these trees. I thought Rsiran would have come up with answers, but unfortunately, it’s beyond even him. With his absence, I’ve been the one responsible for ensuring the safety of the forest, but I no longer know whether I’m doing an adequate job at that.”

  “I’m sure you’re doing as well as you can, Master Neran.” This wasn’t going at all how he needed it to go. They needed Neran to come with them, to study the stone, and to figure out what the Ai’thol were after.

  “I do as well as I can, but it’s not the same as what Rsiran would do. He recognized something about lorcith I haven’t. While I can hear the metal and can use it, I don’t have the same connection to it as him.” Neran took a deep breath, letting it out in a heavy sigh.