Finally, all of the stones were in place except one. The size of her fist, blue-black with swirls of white in it, she held it a long moment, contemplating the pattern before her, then turned to the gardener.
“This one doesn’t belong here,” she said.
The gardener raised his eyebrows in surprise. “It doesn’t belong in the grotto at all?”
She bit her lower lip at his reaction, glanced down at the pattern again, then back at him. “No.”
He grunted, then stood slowly and took the stone from her, gazing at it in consternation, then at the layout of stone before them. Her father said nothing, although his expression was pinched with worry and resignation.
Kara fidgeted as the silence stretched. For a brief moment, she thought she felt something else on the eddies surrounding her, another presence, but the impression was fleeting.
Finally, the gardener nodded. “I believe you are correct.” He tucked the stone into one pocket and glanced toward her father. “I think the outcome of the test is obvious.”
Her father stood slowly and nodded. “Yes.”
“You are not surprised.”
“No. As you said before, we knew. We simply . . . didn’t want to admit it. She’s too young.” Her father caught her gaze, gave her a strained smile.
“She’s young, yes, but not too young. The talent is appearing earlier and earlier as the Baron continues expanding the ley network, as it continues to grow. And with the sowing of the tower, he’s increased the potential in Erenthrall itself greatly. I’m not surprised she was overwhelmed by the surge created in its sowing.”
Kara’s heart shuddered. Something had changed as they spoke, something had shifted, like the lines of energy had shifted as she moved the stones. A distance had opened up between her and her father, a distance she felt even when he had smiled.
“What do we need to do?”
The gardener drew in a deep breath as he straightened, brow creased in thought. “Nothing for now. She should continue to go to school as usual. I’ll inform my fellow Wielders.”
Kara started in surprise, glanced at the gardener’s brown robes in consternation. The Wielders wore dark purple jackets, not robes. And the Prime Wielders—like the ones that came to the school for the testing—wore cloaks.
The gardener—the Wielder—studied her, then said to her father, although his eyes stayed on her, “I believe she has . . . great potential. Perhaps she will even become a Prime. She sensed that the stone did not belong, something I had not yet discovered in my own ministrations of the grotto.” He touched the pocket where he’d secreted the stone, and Kara suddenly remembered seeing him at the entrance to the gardens, doing what she had done here in the grotto—adjusting stones. “I have not been a part of the politics of the Wielders for a long time, so I cannot say what her role will be, not for certain. But I will inform the appropriate people.”
“Very well.”
As if hearing the resignation in her father’s voice, the Wielder tore his attention away from her, smiled, and grasped his shoulder. “You will have some time with her yet,” he said softly. “And there will be other times afterward. Enjoy them.”
Her father nodded, although he did not seem convinced.
The gardener—the Wielder—turned toward her, then knelt, meeting her gaze squarely. “And you, little one . . . you should not be afraid. You will have to leave your father, yes. Your mother and your friends as well. But you will find so much more. You are just beginning to discover the world.”
He smiled and stood, but his words hadn’t settled the trembling panic in her chest or the faint nausea in her stomach. She didn’t like the creases between her father’s eyes, the tension around his mouth.
And she didn’t want to leave Cory and Justin or any of the others behind.
Ischua watched Kara and her father as they left Halliel’s Park, his reassuring smile slipping into a frown as soon as they passed beyond sight. Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew the stone Kara had said didn’t belong in the grotto, rubbing his thumb over its blue-black surface. “You shouldn’t have known this didn’t belong,” he muttered to himself. “I didn’t know it didn’t belong.”
He looked up, in the direction the two had taken out of the grotto, then tucked the stone back in his pocket and headed out of the grotto and through the park, moving toward the entrance and the city beyond. As he did, he scanned the area for signs of the other Tenders of the garden, men and women who had once been Wielders but were now retired, content to work with the lesser, natural node here in the park rather than the intricate and convoluted ley lines and nodes that had been created throughout Erenthrall. He saw no one near the grotto, and only a distant figure—Terrana, perhaps—once he neared the entrance. He hesitated, watching her hunched figure as she pruned one of the hedges, but he didn’t think she’d noticed his visitors.
He entered the flow of traffic on the street, weaving swiftly through the stream of people, carts, and horses toward the marketplace. He skirted its edges, delving deeper into the shops and storefronts that lined the narrower streets to the east. Here the buildings were built of riverstone on the first floor, the second and third stories of wood, part of the oldest section of the city. He made for a small door tucked between two larger shops. He glanced down the street in both directions before entering and descending the stairs into a wide basement beneath both buildings to either side. The noise began as soon as he opened the door and reached a wincing pitch by the time he entered the main room. The acrid scent of ink hit like a stone to the face, even though Ischua had been expecting it. Nose wrinkled, one hand covering his mouth, he tried to take shallow breaths as he searched through the cluttered basement for Dalton. The leader of the Kormanley was near the back, working the printing press making such a profound racket. Ischua wended his way through stacks of newsprint, tied and ready to be distributed by Dalton’s crew of newsboys to the streets above, past reams of yellowish paper smelling faintly of acid and numerous desks and tables full of racks and cubbyholes with the small lettered printers’ blocks in each. Dalton was hunched over one rack, slotting in tiles for the newest article with surprising speed, mumbling to himself as he scanned the scrawl of the writer’s notes. He never looked up from the page, his hands finding the correct letters and fitting them into place out of habit.
Ischua shifted into Dalton’s line of sight slowly, but the Kormanley leader still jerked upright in surprise, hand reaching for something beneath the desk before he registered who had arrived. His eyebrows rose—Ischua rarely saw Dalton outside of the Kormanley’s usual cavernous meeting room—but he shut down the printing press so they could talk. It died with a moan and clatter. Ischua felt its connection to the ley falter, a tension against his skin lessening.
“Ischua, what brings you to my shop?” Dalton asked, wiping his hands on a cloth as he approached. His fingers were stained heavily with black ink, but Ischua didn’t hesitate to shake his hand.
“Someone visited Halliel’s Park today, a young girl. She’s been coming to the park recently, drawn to the node there, I’d guess, and I had her father bring her into the grotto.”
Dalton’s eyes had narrowed. “To test her? She’s manifesting early?”
“Yes.”
“How did she do?”
Ischua pulled the stone from his pocket and set it on Dalton’s work desk. “She aligned all of the stones perfectly, and told me that this stone doesn’t belong in the grotto at all. I’ve been trying to place this stone correctly for four months.”
“So she’s powerful?”
“Definitely Prime level. Although she’s only twelve. It’s possible the manifestations are spiking and she’ll level out below Prime, but I doubt it.”
Dalton picked up the stone and massaged it that same way Ischua had inside the grotto. “Did anyone see you test her?”
“No. None of the other
Tenders were present.”
He met Ischua’s gaze. “Then you don’t have to report this to the Primes.”
“I don’t think so. Her parents have noticed her talent, but I don’t think the school is yet aware of it. They’ll find out shortly, though. I don’t think she’ll be able to keep it controlled on her own long enough to last until the testing at fourteen. Someone in authority will notice before then.”
“You should be the one to find her and take her to the Primes for the official testing. And we’ll have to keep watch once she’s in the Wielders’ hands. If she can be made sympathetic to our cause, perhaps she can provide us with information about what the Wielders are up to.”
He’d gripped the stone in a tight fist as he spoke, but now unclenched his fingers and, after a contemplative pause, handed it back to Ischua.
He gripped Ischua’s shoulder and added, “Keep an eye on her, Ischua. Let me know when she’s ready to be approached by the Kormanley, and when the Wielders become interested in her.”
Tyrus nearly cried out when Calven, his initial contact with the splinter group in the Kormanley, thrust the burlap sack over his head, cutting off his sight. He only stopped himself by biting down on the inside of his mouth hard enough to draw blood. As its coppery taste tainted his mouth and the itchy scent of the impromptu hood assaulted his nostrils, he heard a door open behind him and the tread of at least two pairs of feet enter. A hand fell on his shoulder and squeezed hard.
“Are you certain of this, Calven?” The voice rumbled, low and deep. The hand on his shoulder felt huge. “We know he’s in tight with Dalton and the others who lack true faith.”
Tyrus suppressed the urge to shudder and straightened in indignation. “I have faith,” he protested.
Calven shifted closer, Tyrus straining to pick up any other sounds. His eyes had adjusted and he could see faint light through the weave of the sack. “You heard him. But we’ll be cautious just the same.” His voice shifted toward Tyrus. “We’ll take you to this meeting, but you’ll have to keep the hood on while we travel.”
The man standing over him leaned down and muttered in his ear, “Don’t try anything funny.”
Tyrus cringed.
Then he was hauled to his feet, two of them leading him out of the room down what sounded like corridors, turning left, then right, then right again before a door creaked open and a gust of chill night air puffed through the hood. Before he could enjoy it—he was already sweating with apprehension, his own breath heating the air inside his hood—he was tossed into the back of what he assumed was a wagon. Straw crackled beneath him as he shifted and he heard a rumbling chuckle. The wagon lurched into motion with a quiet, “Tch!” The clop of horse hooves blended into the rattle of the cart as it jounced over cobbles.
Tyrus bit back a curse and rolled onto his back, not trusting himself to sit upright. He tried to control his breathing, the hood already stifling. Fear sweat broke out across his shoulders and back. He’d nearly had a heart attack during those first tentative, blundering conversations with Calven, the man’s eyes narrowing when Tyrus had finally tired of the obscure word play and simply asked about the splinter group. The few moments of careful silence that followed had felt like an eternity. But then Calven had glanced around the bustling market stalls near his own booth and said, “Not here.”
They’d met a couple of times after that in out-of-the-way inns and once in a park, Calven mostly quiet as Tyrus attempted to convince him of his conviction that the Kormanley needed to do more, that he was tired of Dalton’s lack of action. This last time, Calven had asked a few pointed questions, then grunted and told him to meet him at the tavern tonight. He’d led Tyrus into the back room the moment he arrived and produced the burlap sack. Tyrus hadn’t even seen who else was in the tavern, had no idea who the other men were who accompanied them.
The horse’s tread altered, the cart rumbling over wood for a long stretch—Tyrus thought it might be a bridge—and then back onto stone, although the cobbles were smoother here. His teeth didn’t feel like they were going to rattle from their sockets anymore.
The cart halted suddenly, rocking Tyrus forward. He heard muffled conversation, a bark of laughter—
And then someone grabbed his legs and hauled him out of the cart as if he were a sack of grain. His legs flailed over empty space and for a heartbeat he thought he would tumble out into the street, but someone else caught and steadied him.
“You don’t have to be so rough.” A voice he didn’t recognize. A woman’s voice. Somehow, this shocked Tyrus more than anything else that had happened so far.
The meat-handed man growled, “I don’t trust him.”
“Calven does, at least enough to bring him here.”
A grunt and then the meat-handed man grabbed his upper arm and hauled him forward. He stumbled but caught himself and was led away. The fresh air filtering through the hood dropped away, replaced by the faint yet pungent scent of pickling brine. The man leading him said curtly, “Steps up.” He tripped on the first one. They passed into a building—the sounds of their footfalls became hollow and the fresh air filtering through the hood dropped away. A door creaked open. “Stairs down.” Tyrus’ foot caught empty space and he pitched forward, the man wrenching his arm painfully to keep him upright.
By the time they reached the bottom of the steps, earthy scents replacing the brine, Tyrus was gasping, sweat slicking his face from the anxiety. He thought they passed through another door and then he was shoved downward with a sharp, “Sit.”
He plopped down onto a wooden stool and tried to calm himself. The scent of smoke and oil from what must be numerous lanterns cut through the burlap now. Feet shuffled, more than just Calven and the two others, but then everyone quieted and all Tyrus could hear was his own strained breathing. This lasted long enough that Tyrus jumped when a new voice spoke.
“We have a potential new member here tonight. Are you certain of his faith, Calven?”
“He believes.”
“Of course he does, he is part of the Kormanley already, those who are too weak to act, too afraid to take risks. Can we trust him?”
“I believe so. He was too clumsy and inept when he approached me to be a tool of the Dogs.”
Beneath the burlap hood, Tyrus scowled and wondered bitterly if that was why Dalton had chosen him for this task: no one would believe he could be anything but sincere.
“Very well. Remove the sack.”
The burlap hood was jerked off his head and he blinked in the sudden brightness of the lanterns. Six others stood around him in a loose circle, but he couldn’t identify any of them. Each wore the white robes that had long been used by the Kormanley—the true Kormanley—but heavy cowls had been added and all six had pulled them up over their heads, obscuring their faces in the shadows beneath. The room was small, obviously a basement, shelves and tables to one side beneath some type of banner, papers littering every surface. A closed door interrupted the mudbrick of the walls behind him.
Tyrus spit the taste of the burlap off to the side and glared at the cowled figures. “You get to see me, but I don’t get to see you?”
One of the figures snorted—Tyrus thought it was his meat-handed guard—but someone else, the leader apparently, answered. “You aren’t part of our group yet.” Then he turned to the others. “How are we progressing on our next operation? Has our new benefactor come through as promised?”
“He has. The supplies were delivered and have already been dispersed.”
“Where are we on our own delivery? How close are we going to be able to get?”
The woman sighed. “Not as close as we’d like. I’ve bribed the city watch, so we’ll be able to get the wagons into the park, but we can’t get any closer than that. The Wielders and the Dogs are keeping too close a watch on the staging area itself.”
“We still have some time. And there will b
e Dogs in the park, not just city guard. We need a cover for the wagons.”
“That’s one of the reasons I brought him,” Calven said, and motioned toward Tyrus.
Tyrus flinched. “What do you mean? What are you talking about?”
Calven ignored him, turning toward the leader instead. “He works for Erenthrall, issuing permits for business ventures . . . including vending permits for the parks.”
All of those present turned toward Tyrus. The leader stepped forward, until he was directly before him. The lantern light fell in such a way that Tyrus could see the edge of his jaw and a neatly trimmed goatee.
“You want to be part of the Kormanley? You want to force the Baron to release the ley?”
Tyrus nodded and stuttered, “Y-yes.” He didn’t like the hint of danger in the man’s suddenly soft voice.
“Then we need six permits to sell wares in the park.”
Five
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN you’ll be leaving?” Cory said.
Kara squirmed beneath Cory’s gaze and the flatness of his voice.
It had been three weeks since she’d been to Halliel’s Park and rearranged the stones with the gardener, Ischua, and her father watching. Since then, the gap that she’d felt in the grotto between herself and her father had expanded, making any time she spent at home strained. Her mother had reacted the same way, withdrawing somehow, as if distancing herself from Kara even as her parents drew closer together. It was as if she had become one of her father’s clocks, one of the rare and expensive ones he’d been asked to work on, both of them nervous around her, for fear that something they did would cause her to break. Both of them tried to pretend nothing had changed, that nothing had happened, but the tension made staying home awkward. So she found any excuse to leave. She’d spent more and more time with Cory, when he wasn’t helping his father with the candlemaking; when he was, she found herself returning again and again to the park to speak with Ischua.
Shattering the Ley Page 7