He sensed that it was negatively charged, but that felt wrong, too. If it were negatively charged, it would be destructive, which wouldn’t have surprised him. Deshmahne would be drawn to the destructive teralin. But he didn’t have that awful sense he’d had before around negatively charged teralin. What he detected more strongly than the teralin was the temple’s ahmaean, and while powerful, it didn’t have the same feeling to him as what he detected of the groeliin, or of Raime or the other Deshmahne he’d faced.
Did they use it differently here?
The Deshmahne claimed they served the gods, only they did so through a show of strength. What reaction would those in the city have if he revealed himself, if he claimed himself to be a god?
Doing so felt… wrong.
Jakob was no god. He had been born with the ability to reach ahmaean and had been given more by Alyta, but that didn’t make him a god. His visions had shown him that the gods were nothing like what people had believed. They squabbled and disagreed like anyone else, though they did not fight. That might be the only difference. The damahne saw the need to maintain peace.
The entrance to the temple loomed in front of him.
Two Deshmahne stood guard at the door. They didn’t seem to notice him, but then, Jakob had been holding his ahmaean wrapped around himself, keeping hidden so that he wouldn’t draw any attention until he was ready. If the Deshmahne were after him, he would reveal himself when he was ready, and when he had decided whether it was safe for him to risk entering the temple.
If it was made of negatively charged teralin, he wasn’t certain that it would be safe.
Jakob didn’t want to risk getting trapped and not having the ability to shift himself free, though the longer he stood in front of the temple, the less likely he thought that was. There didn’t seem to be any malevolent sense to it, not the way he had expected. There was power, but power by itself was not good or bad.
It was much like what Shoren had once told him about the fibers. They could be used and accessed, but they were neither good nor bad. They simply were.
Perhaps that was true for ahmaean as well.
Jakob reached toward the ahmaean of the temple. He wasn’t certain what would happen, but it responded, allowing him to reach it—and draw it into himself.
There was an odd connection to the ahmaean. Surprisingly, it was familiar, though he wasn’t certain why that should be. He’d drawn the ahmaean from Raime in the past, and when he had, he’d held it within him, separating it from the High Priest so that he couldn’t harm Jakob with it anymore, but this was a different sense. This was a connection that felt as if he had known it before.
Had he? With all the visions he’d had, all the times that he’d glimpsed along the fibers, and even walked back, risking himself to reach beyond himself, was it possible that one of those memories had known this sense of ahmaean?
There were none that came to mind that seemed as if they were a fit with what he now experienced. Jakob held on to the sense of the ahmaean, letting it fill him.
What would happen if he were to draw it into his sword?
The temptation was there, and he gripped the hilt, letting it flow from him and into the sword.
There was a sense of echoing, a familiarity.
And he understood.
It was the dark side of his sword.
Why would the darker side of his sword have the same ahmaean as he detected from the temple? Was there a connection between its creation and that of the Deshmahne?
He had seen the aftermath of his sword’s creation, but he had not stepped back to observe the forging itself. For him to understand, it might be time for him to do that, though he could use that argument with so many different things.
Standing and looking up at the temple would not bring him any closer to answers.
Was he willing to risk the possibility that he’d be trapped within the temple? He didn’t think it likely and didn’t think that there was anything to the ahmaean that he detected here that would enable the Deshmahne to hold him, but he didn’t understand teralin as well as Shoren or the other damahne who had much more experience with it.
He needed to know.
Jakob had felt drawn here. The glimpse he’d had of the future, of looking forward along the fibers, had made it seem as if he needed to come to Paliis, but he didn’t entirely know what he would find here, other than some danger to Roelle. Was it only about the Deshmahne and Roelle or was there something more in the vision that he had yet to observe?
He started forward, holding on to the sense of the ahmaean that concealed him.
When he reached the two Deshmahne guards, he paused, letting his ahmaean stretch from him and touch them, wanting to know whether there was anything that he could detect about them. He sensed an eagerness to serve, and a desire to know the gods, and a search for power. There was nothing else.
Could he help them feel a sense of calm?
Jakob used his ahmaean to soothe them.
When his connection washed over them, it was faint. He wanted only for them to feel a connection to something greater, but not for them to know that he was there. Let them think one of the gods had visited them. Maybe he could use that devotion for a greater good. Maybe he could use the Deshmahne desire to serve the gods and to show their strength in a way that would benefit those who did not have the same power.
He passed between them, shifting into the temple.
A part of him had wondered whether the temple’s ahmaean would prevent him from shifting, but neither the ahmaean nor the teralin blocked him.
Jakob appeared just on the other side of the door. He continued to keep himself concealed so he could observe. There was movement within the temple. Priests hurried past, unaware of his presence. There were no others. He saw no parishioners, not as he would have within Chrysia, and there was no sign of anyone not wearing the dark robes of the Deshmahne.
As he stood there, he attempted to shift.
He appeared a dozen steps forward, pleased that he still could. If he had failed, might his attempt have been detected? Would he have needed to fight his way free from the temple? Though he was willing to do it, there had to be another way to bring the Deshmahne away from Raime. But doing so would take patience and the attention of someone who was willing to work with him and find that commonality.
There was ahmaean all around him.
It came from the temple, but it surrounded those within the temple. Each of the priests who passed had ahmaean, and each time they went past, Jakob was reminded of how they had acquired that power. For the most part, their tattoos were not visible, hidden by their robes, but some had markings extending up onto their exposed necks, and even their faces.
Another sense of ahmaean called to him, one that he recognized.
Why would there be a familiar sense within the temple? What did he detect?
Jakob remained concealed and made his way down the hall. As he focused on the familiar ahmaean, he thought about his ability to hide in plain sight. It was a useful ability, and if he could hold on to it, allowing him to explore undetected, he might learn what the Deshmahne planned.
Seeing how… normal… they were made him question whether they had anything planned at all. Maybe they were nothing more than the priests they presumed to be. The Deshmahne he’d encountered in the past had been those who had served Raime the longest and the best, but with Raime mostly gone—along with his influence—would it be possible that Jakob could find a way to use the Deshmahne to help him?
The idea seemed impossible, but the fact that his sword reverberated with the power of the temple made him think there was a way. Though made of teralin, the sword was not forged in the way the Deshmahne swords had been—and it had ahmaean of its own, gifted by those who had created the sword.
The familiar sense of ahmaean drew him to a massive room. The teralin walls had the negative polarity, but here, everything had the negative polarity.
Not everything, he realized.
There was a sense of positive polarity, but it was beyond the wall. Had he not been paying attention to teralin and the polarity, he doubted he would have noticed it. Even aware of it, he wasn’t entirely certain how to reach it.
Jakob paused at one of the walls.
A priest stood in the back of the room. He wore a short-sleeved robe, different from the others. With the tattoos that worked along his arms and up onto his neck and even extending onto his face, it was easy to tell why he would want the short-sleeved robe. It allowed him to demonstrate the markings to show how connected he was to others with ahmaean. Stolen power. Dark ahmaean swirled around this priest in thicker bands than any of the other priests he had seen. Jakob determined this man was likely the High Desh of the temple.
Jakob ignored him as he focused on the wall. The sense of familiarity was there. There was also something of the positive polarity—the only thing like it that he’d detected while here. That had to be meaningful, if only he could understand why and what he was expected to learn from it.
With his focus drawn to the wall, and trying to understand what he attempted to reach, he missed the priest approaching.
“You will not be able to open this door.”
“Why?” he asked, before realizing that the priest had seen him, which meant Jakob had inadvertently lost his connection to his concealment. How many others of the Deshmahne had been able to see him and had not said anything? “You can see me.”
The priest dipped his head, holding it in a bow. “I am blessed by your presence, Great One.”
The priest looked up at him, seemingly waiting for permission to rise once more. Jakob was reluctant to give it. There was something about having the High Desh bowing to him that was better than an alternative.
Tattoos along his flesh seemed to writhe, as if alive. They had appeared to do the same on the other powerful Deshmahne Jakob had been around, and he didn’t know if it was an illusion, or had something to do with the way they stole power.
If they were alive, they were given that life because of the power they had stolen, power they had claimed from others.
“If you’re blessed, then you’ll open this door.”
The priest bowed lower. “I do not think that wise.”
Jakob frowned. “Did you know I was in the city?”
The priest trembled slightly. “You were detected when you first appeared. We have a way of knowing when the gods step beyond themselves.”
“I didn’t realize that I’d stepped beyond myself.”
The priest kept his gaze locked on the floor. At least he hadn’t attacked. It gave Jakob reason to believe that he would not attack. “Perhaps I misspoke, Great One. This language is not native to me.”
It was only then that Jakob realized he had been speaking in the ancient language without realizing it. How could the High Desh speak it so fluently? Jakob had the advantage of walking along the fibers and living lives as those who had known it, which had granted him that connection, but the priest should not have been able to do so… unless he had the same ability.
Raime once had managed to reach the fibers. Jakob had exiled him from them, but that didn’t change the fact that he had reached them, and had likely been doing so for far longer than Jakob knew.
“Did you send others to follow me?” he asked.
“They were sent to find you and offer you the welcome of the Temple of Forgotten Gods.”
It had a name. Jakob had expected the temple to be something else, to be a signal of power, and perhaps a way for the Deshmahne to claim they didn’t need the gods for their power, but even in the naming they had given honor to the gods.
How much of the Deshmahne had he misunderstood?
He needed to find Roelle. Once he did, he could ask her what she had learned of the Deshmahne while in the city, and hopefully, she could help him find Brohmin. For some reason, Brohmin’s current location had been obscured from him when he had attempted searching for him within the fibers.
“They were following me. I consider that an offense.”
The priest looked up a moment before bowing his head once more. The ahmaean swirling around him intensified before fading, pulsing out and pressing into the walls of the temple.
Were the priests creating the ahmaean that surrounded the temple?
Jakob had thought it came from something in the teralin, but the metal didn’t have ahmaean of its own. It could augment and store, but it didn’t gift any ahmaean.
“No offense was intended, Great One. We seek only to serve, and to demonstrate to the people the strength of the gods so that they do not forget the power you possess. You have been gone from the world for a long time.”
A long time. It had been centuries since any damahne had made themselves known. Centuries since they had considered themselves a part of the world, guiding the Urmahne and the Magi. Jakob only knew that because of his visions. Before that time, the damahne had been reserved, but they hadn’t been hidden.
“Much has changed. There was a great attack which angered me.”
The priest sucked in a sharp breath. “The Highest said that you would be pleased by the demonstration.”
“Pleased that the followers would be attacked? How would that please the gods?”
The conversation felt strange to him. It was odd for him to have a conversation and pretend to be one of the gods, but how else would he discover what he needed to know about the Deshmahne?
“The demonstration was meant as a way to show the gods that we have rediscovered the strength given to mankind. That is why you departed for so long, is it not?”
Jakob shook his head, eyeing the wall. Where was the access through it? What was on the other side that the High Desh wanted to hide from him? That was the key, wasn’t it? There had to be something there that he needed to find, but the priest feared him finding.
“There are many reasons we have been gone.”
“It has been centuries.”
“What is time to the gods?” As he said it, Jakob realized the words were not his own. It was something Shoren would have said—had said—when confronted by those who believed he was one of the gods. Jakob had seen him speaking in such a way during the first Choosing, and could remember the conflicted way that Shoren had spoken, not wanting to deny the gods to those who believed, but feeling the uncertainty when it came to pretending to be something he was not.
“You are right, Great One.”
Jakob regarded the priest. He kept his head bowed, but that seemed the only deference he demonstrated. There was no fear in his posture, and when Jakob sent his ahmaean to connect with that of the priest, he noted no fear within his aura, either.
Was he only paying lip service to what he told Jakob?
He had to admit that it was possible.
Did the High Desh think Jakob unable to use the dark ahmaean?
Perhaps it was time he showed that he could.
Jakob pulled on it, drawing through Neamiin, pulling it from the priest and from the walls of the temple, and directed it at the wall he stood before.
The High Desh gasped.
A section of the wall slid open.
“The gods cannot—”
“Why can they not?” Jakob asked.
He stepped through the door. As he did, he recognized the positively charged teralin, and he finally understood why the distant sense of ahmaean was familiar to him.
But why would Roelle have been trapped in the temple?
Chapter Thirteen
Jakob made his way through the corridor connected to the main hall of the temple. The High Desh followed him, his ahmaean compact and staying near him, but occasionally he would push it away from himself and use it to touch upon the walls of the hallway. Did the teralin in the walls need that contact? Was the priest even aware of how he used his ahmaean?
It was possible that he wasn’t.
The Magi didn’t have control over their ahmaean, and weren’t always in tune with how they were connected, so
it was possible that the Deshmahne wouldn’t be, either, though given what he’d seen from the Deshmahne, it was equally possible that they did know what they were doing when manipulating their ahmaean.
If so, why did the priest need to touch the teralin? Did it connect them in some way, or was it a way for them to reach for the power stored within the metal?
“Why do you have this Mage here?” he asked. They neared the end of the corridor, and another door blocked his way. Behind the door, he suspected he would find Roelle.
Could the priest be using his connection to the ahmaean to try and prevent Jakob from accessing the room where they stored Roelle? He would tear down the temple to rescue her if necessary.
“It’s not what you think, Great One.”
Jakob rounded on the High Desh. “Not what I think? Let me tell you what I suspect. There’s a Mage imprisoned here. She’s someone I know and care about.” There had been a time early on when he’d had something of a crush on Roelle. Perhaps he still did, but time spent with Anda had left him with conflicted emotions. The daneamiin helped him find peace when he had none, though Roelle had challenged him, welcomed him, before he knew that he had anything more to offer the world, when he had thought himself nothing more than a historian’s apprentice. “If she’s harmed—or if you think to hold her away from me—you will learn how powerful the gods remain.”
The irritation in him surprised him.
It was more than irritation. It was anger.
Was that the effect of the teralin?
He’d felt the doubt when confronted with Deshmahne before, and recognized it when they tried to use it on him now, but this was not the same. Or, if it was, then it was much subtler than anything he’d encountered before. Within the temple, the subtlety was unsurprising.
The priest bowed his head. “Of course, Great One. I would not think—”
Jakob ignored him as he reached the door. It was locked. He surged his ahmaean through the door, thickening it as he attempted to open the door, but met with resistance. When he pulled on the dark ahmaean around him, he found resistance there.
The Gift of Madness (The Lost Prophecy Book 7) Page 11