The Gift of Madness (The Lost Prophecy Book 7)

by D. K. Holmberg

  “How long? Can’t you look back along the fibers and see that answer?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Scottan smiled, and darkness glittered in his eyes. “He came to me when I had those memories. He offered power and a promise. If I served him, he would see that I possessed the power of the gods.”

  “You didn’t need to serve him to obtain that power. Don’t you see, Scottan? You were born to that power. What you’re doing now betrays that gift!”

  Scottan snorted. “Does it? Or am I given a greater attachment to it because I have accepted a promise? What he offered to me has come true.”

  Jakob stared at his brother a moment, and a question came to him. It was one that he should have thought about sooner, but then, he never would have expected his brother to have sided with Raime. How could he, when Raime wouldn’t have had access to him?

  But he did. Somehow, Raime had inserted himself along Scottan’s memories.

  And if he had done that with Scottan, could he have done that to the others?

  Jakob’s heart fluttered.

  “You begin to see the connection, don’t you?” Scottan asked.

  “They came for you?”

  Scottan shrugged. “Not only for me, but I was one. Had you not brought me here, they would have returned me to him sooner. I don’t think he ever expected you to have brought me so close to where he could reach me. And now…”

  “You summoned the groeliin to Chrysia? Do you know how many died because of that attack? Do you know how many in the temple were destroyed because of what those creatures did?”

  “Their deaths serve the gods much more than any service to the Urmahne.” Scottan leaned forward, the blackness of his eyes giving Jakob a cold chill.

  Could Jakob ever get through to his brother? How, when Scottan seemed so angry and so different from the man Jakob had once known? Or thought he’d known.

  “He has followed through on everything he’s promised, Jakob. You’ve only slowed him, but he has shown me everything he’s planned for over the years. You are nothing to him, only an inconvenience.”

  “I’m an inconvenience who has managed to stop him and managed to restore the fibers. I intend to continue to be that inconvenience. I will stop him. I will see him destroyed.”

  “How, when he’s already beaten you? I’ve seen it. He showed me the possibilities. He pushed me forward along the fibers and showed me the darkness that comes from you. That darkness is his victory.”

  “That darkness is his mistake.” Jakob watched his brother, hoping for some sign that the man he knew was still there, but he was not rewarded. It pained him to see Scottan like this.

  “If you possess the ability you claim, you can go back and look and see that everything I tell you is true,” Scottan said. “You don’t need me to prove it to you.”

  Jakob sighed. How could his brother do this to him? How could he do it to others who possessed the same ability he did?

  “And those groeliin you took? You allow them to be sacrificed?”

  “Sacrificed? They weren’t taken for sacrifice. They were taken to serve.” Scottan’s eyes narrowed. “You think I was the only one he chose to serve him?” He shook his head. “Do you see how little you know, Jakob? You see how little you have mastered? He has planned for centuries, and he is powerful.”

  Jakob stared at Scottan. What was there for him to say? This was his brother, but this wasn’t the man he knew. This wasn’t the person he’d grown up with. He had to believe that whatever damage Raime had done to the fibers had twisted his brother in a way that Jakob had not yet restored. Which meant he would have to find some way to get through to him, even if it meant reaching back along the fibers, and somehow changing them.

  But then, if he did that, wasn’t he doing exactly what Scottan claimed? If he was selfish about the use of his abilities, how was that any different?

  “Where are they?”

  “It would be a mistake for you to go after them,” Scottan said.

  “It would be a mistake for me not to.”

  His brother smiled. “If you do this, they will capture you, and they will use you. You might have managed to stop them once, but there are at least a dozen, and each of them is powerful—possibly more powerful than you.”

  “I’ve faced them already, and I’ve survived.”

  “You’ve faced them, but you haven’t really faced them. I’ve heard what happened. You surprised them, you and your pet. They won’t be surprised by you again, especially as you lost your pet during the attack, didn’t you?”

  How could Scottan have known that? Jakob hadn’t shared that the nemerahl was lost, but if he knew, it meant that perhaps Scottan was better informed than Jakob realized. Could Raime have actually reached along the fibers and shared information with Scottan? Why couldn’t he? Jakob had managed to walk back and had managed to speak to Shoren. If he was able to do that, why wouldn’t Raime have been able to influence those he had twisted?

  And he had thought he’d sealed Raime off from the fibers. How could he have been so mistaken?

  He turned away from his brother, leaving him chained to the bed, and headed toward the door.

  “I’m going to escape. And when I do—”

  Jakob glanced over his shoulder. “You aren’t going to escape. You’re here because I captured you, much like I will your master. And when I capture him, I will see that he harms no others.”

  “That’s who you fear? You are so misguided. You don’t understand anything. If you did, you would see that—”

  Jakob ignored him as he shifted outside the door.

  Anda stood there, waiting for him. She watched him with eyes that glittered with sadness. Ahmaean pushed away from her, washing over him. “I am sorry, Jakob Nialsen. I don’t know how this could have happened and we would not have discovered before now.”

  “He’s served Raime since the moment he was healed,” Jakob said. “The groeliin attack on Chrysia was because of Scottan.”

  It didn’t surprise him that Raime had targeted Scottan. Jakob had beaten Raime, and the man would have used everything he could to find a way to hurt Jakob. It should surprise him, but the more he learned about Raime, the less that anything he did shocked him.

  “What do you intend to do?”

  “I have to go after the others. Scottan claims they were captured to serve, but I’m not convinced.”

  “Would you have believed your brother capable of it before now?”

  “I wouldn’t have believed Scottan capable of this, but there is one among them that I believe even less,” he said. He thought of Malaya, and how relieved she had been when he had rescued her from the madness. Were it not for her disappearance, Jakob could almost believe that the others were in on it.

  “Do you think the others are ready to help you?”

  Jakob sighed. “I don’t think they are. Only Bethanne has been awoken, and the others would only be in danger.”

  “You can’t do this alone, Jakob Nialsen. You have already seen how powerful these creatures are,” Anda said.

  What he needed was a way to trap them, and he thought that he might know how to do it, if only it worked. It was the same way he had managed to overcome Jostephon. The metal would be the key, but first, he had to find the groeliin.

  And when he did, then he had to draw them to him, and force them to attack.

  None of it would be easy, none of it would be guaranteed to even work.

  “I think I can find them. It’s something I haven’t tried before, but something Scottan said made me think of it.”

  “What?”

  “The fibers. I will need to use them.” He took Anda’s hand and shifted to an upper room within the Tower.

  When he appeared, he sat in a chair that once had been Shoren’s, and closed his eyes, knowing that Anda would keep an eye on him. He pulled on his ahmaean, drawing it inward, and moved back along the fibers.

  As he did, he drew power from the Tow
er.

  His ahmaean seemed to reverberate with the ahmaean stored within the Tower walls. It was almost as if it was the reason for its presence. Could it be that the Tower had been designed as a focus?

  The Tower was a construct of the damahne and had been built before Shoren had taken power, otherwise, he would have expected his ancestor to be responsible for it. The reverberation of ahmaean seemed to echo with the power of all those damahne that had come before him. Jakob was able to draw upon it and use that energy, much like he had used the energy when he had been within the caverns far to the north, and stepped outside of the fibers.

  There was a pulse of power.

  He could practically see the fibers. When he looked at them in this way, there was a sense of light all around. It was energy—ahmaean—that which came from countless lives going on around him. In this place, and standing here the way he was, he could see the fibers stretching out before him, and all he would have to do would be to untangle them, tease them apart so that he could see the possibilities, but doing so took significant strength, and that was not where he wanted to focus his energy right now. He needed to use it in a different way, and he needed to see if there was any way for him to follow the fibers and see where those who had suffered from the madness had gone.

  The one he was best connected to would be the one he could find the most easily.

  Jakob remembered seeing the damage to Malaya’s fibers. She had been sick a long time, and when she had recovered, her mind had been slow to come back. But she was resilient, and she had come back. Jakob could track that and realized that he should have attempted this before, but he’d been focused on so many other things, all of which seemed unimportant now.

  As he searched, he recognized the once twisted and scarred fiber that represented Malaya’s time.

  He stepped toward it, and then, in a surge of understanding, he stepped into the fiber.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Jakob had never assumed control of a host in his time. Always before, he had done it in the past, doing so in a way that likely would not have changed anything. This… this would change things. There was no way he could not impact the possibilities that existed for Malaya by assuming control of her body.

  But if it worked, he could rescue her.

  He looked around. He had expected he would appear in someplace like the teralin mines, someplace that would remind him of the northern mountains, but that wasn’t what he encountered at all. This was a stone building, simple, and fire burned nearby. The air had a strange odor, and he couldn’t tell quite what it was, only that it irritated her nostrils. There was no movement, nothing else other than Malaya. Bands of neutral teralin encircled her wrists, and he saw she was then bound by chains.

  Jakob took a moment and withdrew from her mind much as he did when he used Shoren as a host. She was still there, though she seems small and fragile, much like her wrists seemed inside the bands of teralin.

  Malaya. It’s Jakob. I need you to tell me what you experienced.

  Jakob? What horror is this now?

  There is no horror. This is the ability of the damahne. It’s something that you will eventually be able to do, but for now, it’s my way of trying to help you—and the others who were captured. I need to know where you are.

  With him withdrawn as he was, Malaya had greater control over her body. She began sobbing, taking small, gasping breath, and tears streamed down her face. She tried to reach for the tears to wipe them away, but the teralin binding her hands did not allow her to reach her face. The groeliin had her confined, but since she had no understanding of her abilities yet, the teralin on its own did little. She wasn’t even aware that it was teralin, or that she’d not be able to control teralin in its neutral form. It was the physical restraint that mattered more to Malaya.

  I can help, but I need to know where you are.

  I don’t know where I am!

  Jakob could tell that she didn’t believe he was real. If it happened to him, would he have believed? It was unlikely that he would. More likely was that he would feel much the same way that Malaya did, that he imagined some horror, and that he had slipped back into the madness.

  How could he prove to her that he was real?

  The teralin. He could use that and could help her free herself, demonstrating to her that he was not imagined.

  Doing so would require borrowing her ahmaean.

  Malaya was strong and had a potent connection to ahmaean. Had she not, he suspected that she would have succumbed to the effects of the madness long before. Instead, she had managed to survive when so many others had perished.

  Jakob moved forward, assuming control of Malaya, forcing her to the back of her own mind.

  He surveyed the room and pulled on the teralin cuffs. There was no way to free her from them. Her body wasn’t strong enough to jerk free, and he wouldn’t be able to shift her free from the neutral teralin. He could feel it pressing against the ahmaean, and understood how it had once confined of the damahne.

  Except, Jakob knew how to shift the polarity.

  Would Malaya be strong enough?

  It might be that she wasn’t. There might not be anything for him to do other than return to himself and come to her. But if he could shift her free of the teralin, not only could he bring her to freedom—and possibly the Tower—but he might be able to stop the powerful groeliin.

  He pulled on the ahmaean and sent it through the teralin.

  She wasn’t strong enough.

  Malaya had a significant connection to the ahmaean on her own, but it wouldn’t be enough to shift the polarity of the teralin. Jakob often struggled with doing so, and he had a stronger connection to ahmaean, augmented by many damahne from over the years.

  Would he be able to borrow from other ahmaean?

  There had to be some way, didn’t there?

  He continued to pull on ahmaean, drawing as much as he could from the room. As he did, he sent it through the teralin cuffs, and slowly, almost too slowly, began to feel a change within it.

  When he did, he pushed harder. All he needed to do was switch the polarity of the cuffs around her wrists. Once he had freed them, he could get her ankles free.

  He heard noise somewhere nearby.

  Jakob tried to ignore it, focusing instead on the teralin confining Malaya.

  Something pushed on him, and it took a moment to realize that it was dark ahmaean.

  The groeliin were coming.

  Jakob tried to hold his focus and continued to push against the teralin, needing only to force the polarity toward the positive.

  There had to be away. But she simply didn’t have enough ahmaean to help.

  No. That wasn’t it. The ahmaean she possessed wasn’t fully awoken yet.

  Could he help that from a distance?

  It seemed impossible, but could he use the fibers as a conduit?

  Jakob retreated, pulling back mostly so that he could feel himself once more standing outside the fibers, but left a trickle of his consciousness within Malaya. He sensed her panic and her fear and uncertainty that the madness might be returning. There was no time to try to calm her. He had to act quickly because he was certain the groeliin were coming. And if they did, and if they recognized that he was trying to free her, would they simply torment her? Or would they kill her?

  Jakob pulled ahmaean from himself and sent it across the fibers, and into Malaya.

  Would it work?

  He held that ahmaean, and then severed it, much as he had with the other damahne.

  He waited. A heartbeat. Another heartbeat.

  It remained.

  Jakob surged forward, returning to Malaya, and ignoring the fear that coursed through her again. He hoped he did not destroy her mind by doing so, but needed the control. When he was done, he would apologize, and he would find some way to restore her mind.

  Her ahmaean had changed. It answered him more easily. Jakob pulled on it and surged it through the teralin.

 
Instead of resistance as he felt before, the teralin began to shift and slid to the positive polarity.

  Jakob focused on her ankles. It was easier now, and he managed to change the polarity there.

  He shifted.

  Once free, he stood in Malaya’s form. Her legs were weak, as were her arms, and there was no weapon in the room.

  He needed to get her to freedom, but if he did, it was possible that he would never learn where she had been taken, and he would never learn where the others were.

  I’m sorry, Jakob said.

  He looked around the room, searching for anything that could be used as a weapon. There was a slender rod of metal in the corner, and he wasn’t surprised to see that it was negatively charged teralin. It had probably been used to steal Malaya’s ability, but likely it wouldn’t have worked. Her ahmaean had not awoken, not until now.

  Jakob pulsed through the dark teralin and shifted it to the positive polarity.

  He held the length of metal clutched in his hand and waited.

  He didn’t have to wait for long.

  A groeliin appeared.

  In the back of Malaya’s mind, she whimpered. He could feel her convulsing in fear, and could feel the way that she panicked, terrified of the groeliin. And she should be. This creature could destroy her.

  Dark ahmaean radiated from it in a fog.

  Jakob pushed back, sending the ahmaean away from the creature. He shifted toward it and used the moment of surprise to jab the length of teralin into the creature’s eye, burying it all the way.

  The groeliin convulsed and then fell forward, almost toppling onto Malaya.

  Jakob managed to shift away just in time.

  He stood back, and retreated to the back of Malaya’s mind, allowing her to take control.

  It’s not the madness, Jakob said. I’m coming to you across the fibers of time, trying to reach you so that I can help.

  You did this? This is real?

  This is as real as it can be. I am here, but I’m also not.

  You killed that creature. I killed that creature.

  That creature is called a groeliin. This one is powerful, and if I didn’t kill it, it would have killed you, especially since you have now escaped from the confines of the trap they had you in.