The Heartstone Blade (The Dark Ability Book 2)

by Holmberg, D. K.

  “Then it’s good I offered to come.”

  Haern took the lead, making his way between the neighboring houses, slipping into the shadows and quickly fading to be practically invisible. Rsiran hurried after him, wondering where Haern might lead him. Stones crunched too loudly under his boots. Each step seemed to send small debris cascading down the gentle slope that existed between the houses. The air felt heavier here, as well, and mixed with an undercurrent that seemed almost sickly sweet.

  Haern stopped near the back of the house. A flat expanse of stone and grass fitted between this house and the one behind it. Two small trees struggled to grow, strangled by the height of the houses. One bloomed with a half-dozen limp flowers, the color of the petals bleached by night and lack of sunlight. Rsiran couldn’t help but think that Jessa wouldn’t even bother with those.

  “Where are you going?” Rsiran whispered.

  “Can’t go through the front door now, can we? Raises too much suspicion if we’re seen trying to pick the lock and sneak through. Besides, I wouldn’t be surprised if the alchemists left some sort of surprises for anyone who tried to come in that way.”

  Haern glanced at the other houses visible to them from where they stood. No lanterns lit the homes, and no candles flickered in windows. And, hopefully, no one Sighted watched them.

  “Still certain this is the alchemists?” Haern asked.

  Rsiran listened. Since encountering Haern, he hadn’t spent as much energy trying to suppress awareness of the rest of the lorcith around him, but by not doing so, the distant sense of lorcith he’d heard had faded to little more than a murmuring, barely scratching at the back of his consciousness.

  As he had before, he focused on the sense of lorcith he felt, pushing each piece away one by one, until all he felt—all he heard—was that faint sensation of the alloy. As he did, he knew it was here, somewhere behind the walls of this home.

  “Not certain, but it’s the most likely,” he said.

  Haern nodded and then slipped away, drifting along the back of the house. Rsiran followed closely. He considered Sliding, but the lorcith warned against it, almost as if speaking to him. And then Haern stopped before a small door.

  Rsiran had seen Jessa and Brusus pick their way through locks with skill. What Haern did next looked less refined, but went more quickly than what either had managed. Taking the slender lorcith knife, he shoved it into the lock, twisted once, and shoved a shoulder against the door. It popped open.

  Neither moved for a moment, listening, but nothing came but the whispers of the hidden lorcith.

  Haern ducked inside the door. Rsiran waited for a moment before following him in. As he did, he thought he heard the quiet cry of a distant cat. He didn’t wait to hear if it repeated.

  * * *

  The darkened building seemed to swallow him, even more when he pulled the door closed behind him. Haern hovered nearby, barely more than a presence, the lorcith of his knife pushing on his awareness. The heaviness he’d smelled between the buildings was thicker here, filling his nostrils with the odor.

  “Where do we start?” Haern whispered.

  Rsiran pointed down what he thought was some sort of hallway. Without any light, he didn’t know with certainty. “I can’t see much.”

  Haern sighed out a soft laugh. “My Sight is not much better. Should have brought Jessa.”

  “I didn’t want to risk her.”

  “Good,” Haern said. “Stay close to me.”

  Rsiran couldn’t tell what else might be in the building. For all he knew, they might be surrounded by dozens of people, or it could simply be an empty house. Haern let Rsiran lead as they moved deeper into the house. Rsiran held onto the muted sense of lorcith he felt and let it guide him as he made his way down the hall.

  As he drew nearer, he felt aware of something else. Only when he reached a door blocking him from going any further did he notice what he felt. Unshaped lorcith.

  “What is it, Rsiran?” Haern whispered.

  “Something changed.”

  “What?”

  Haern slipped to stand alongside him. Rsiran felt the knife in Haern’s hand pointed toward the door.

  “I feel lorcith. Different from before.”

  “Do you think someone else is here?” Haern asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Haern turned toward him. He felt it more as a shifting of his cloak, the soft fabric rustling quietly as he moved. Haern grabbed his shoulder and pulled him gently until the wall pushed back against him.

  “Wait.”

  Haern reached for the door and twisted, pushing it open just enough for him to slip through. He didn’t close it completely. Cool air breathed out through the crack.

  And, suddenly, he no longer sensed Haern’s knife.

  Rsiran pushed back against the wall. Haern couldn’t have simply disappeared. The distant sense of lorcith stayed with him, and he let it go, drawing on other lorcith around him, listening for Haern. At first, it came back to him faintly, hidden and soft. Then he felt it more strongly. Only it didn’t move.

  He waited, but still the sense of the knife didn’t change. Had Haern dropped it? That seemed unlikely. Haern had gripped it tightly as he made his way through the door, not to mention that he was a skilled assassin. Losing his weapon didn’t seem likely.

  The only other thing he could think of was that Haern was in danger.

  Haern wouldn’t be here if not for him. He wouldn’t have followed him into the house, risked angering the alchemists, if not for Rsiran. All the time he’d wondered where Haern’s allegiance really lay, and now he might have sent him into danger.

  Rsiran stepped through the door. A whistle of bitter air hit his nose, and for the briefest second, colors seemed to swirl. Then past the door, he saw nothing. A soft shimmering crossed over his skin, like a tingling cool touch. For a moment, he wondered if water dripped across his skin but didn’t feel anything else. The sensation passed, but left a knot of nausea in his stomach.

  Darkness surrounded him. But through it, he felt lorcith all around him. Just as he had in the mines, Rsiran used that sense to navigate through this space, sensing for voids in the lorcith to move carefully.

  Where was Haern?

  He didn’t sense the knife. Rsiran hesitated and listened again. Distantly, the knife called to him, as if recognizing he sought it. But from what he could tell, there didn’t seem any way to reach it. Walls of lorcith blocked him.

  If he couldn’t reach him, he couldn’t help Haern. Rsiran did the only thing he could think of. Anchoring to the knife, he Slid.

  He emerged in a flat, open area. Blue light from four lanterns on the walls lit the space. Walls were smooth stone, not lorcith or the alloy but something different, and not simple rock. It took him a moment to realize that the ground under his feet was made of large sheets of the alloy, hammered flat and pieced together. There seemed a pattern, but he couldn’t tell what it might be. The air in the room tasted stale and still.

  Haern lay on the floor, unmoving. The knife he carried had fallen just out of reach.

  Muted voices drifted as through a thick door, though he saw no sign of a door. As far as he could tell, no one else was in the room with them.

  He hurried to Haern and checked if he breathed. His chest rose slowly.

  Glancing around, he saw drawers lining one wall, practically built into the stone, with twisted handles that seemed to have grown from the drawers themselves. He hadn’t seen them before. Nothing else marred the walls.

  Where was he? Some area deep below the alchemist guild? Or someplace else?

  Other than the knife on the ground, and the lorcith around him, he felt no other lorcith. Not even the distant and muted sense that had brought him to the house.

  This must be where he needed to go, but how could he learn the secrets of the alchemists here?

  He hesitated, listening to the distant voices. They hadn’t come any closer.

  He should grab Haern and g
et out, especially if others could learn he’d been there, but… would he have an opportunity like this again? He needed to understand the alloy, and seeing how much the alchemists possessed, he knew that he’d come to the right place. Would the alchemists learn that they’d entered their guild? Haern had jammed open the door; surely they would see it. And had he closed the door before coming through? Rsiran didn’t think he had.

  That meant he had to learn what he could now.

  He ran toward the far wall and toward the drawers. His feet slapped with a muted sound as he ran. It seemed to take longer than it should to reach the other end of the room, almost as if he moved more slowly than normal. He considered Sliding again, but hesitated. What if someone on the other side of the wall felt the ripples of his Slide? Della said that skill was not very common, but it didn’t mean others weren’t aware. And if any would know, wouldn’t it be someone like the alchemists?

  Finally, he reached the wall. Small marks etched into the stone face of the drawers. Nothing with letters or numbers, nothing that identified one from another. Nearly two-dozen drawers. He didn’t have time to look through each one.

  Rsiran studied the drawers, scanning them quickly. One of them jumped out at him. The edge of the drawer seemed off, as if it had been opened more than the others.

  The voices moved. He didn’t have much time to spare.

  Rsiran grabbed the handle and pulled. The drawer didn’t budge.

  He tried again and again nothing changed.

  Rsiran tried a different approach. Pushing on the lorcith in the handle, there came a soft click and the drawer slid open.

  It was deeper than he would have expected.

  Rsiran leaned over the edge and looked inside, holding his breath as he did.

  He didn’t know what he expected. Items of power or gold and silver or even strange shapings of lorcith. Instead, the drawer contained a stack of parchment. Hundreds of pages.

  Rsiran pulled out a few and started thumbing through them when the voices he’d heard became more distinct.

  He pushed and the drawer closed. Only then did he remember that he still held the pages of parchment. He stuffed them into his pocket.

  The sound of something heavy sliding slowly rumbled toward him.

  His heart skipped. Without thinking, he Slid toward Haern. Then he scooped up the knife and grabbed Haern.

  Someone gasped. Rsiran didn’t dare turn and look.

  Feet pounded across the floor. The sound was muted and distant but quickly became louder.

  He did not wait. Pulling Haern with him, he anchored to the sword in his smithy and Slid from the guild house.

  Chapter 25

  Rsiran emerged from the Slide into the smithy.

  Haern flopped onto the floor, still not moving. The effort of the Slide had been much like Sliding from the palace, and Rsiran suspected that only the familiarity of the smithy and the sword he used to anchor to had helped him reach it safely.

  He dropped down next to Haern, breathing heavily. He glanced at Haern’s chest to make sure he still breathed.

  Almost caught. And certainly discovered. Whoever had come into the guild house knew that someone had Slid from there. How long would it be before the alchemist guild sent the constables for him? Or something worse?

  Everything seemed to be cascading out of control. And it all pointed to Josun Elvraeth. Had they not gotten mixed up with him, had Rsiran never tried entering the palace, how much would be different? Now he had violated another place nearly as off limits as the palace. And brought Haern with him this time.

  For what? For pages of parchment? He still had no idea about the alloy, no way of knowing what it took to make it, only that the strange silver-like metal was involved somehow. Firell still took lorcith away for an Elvraeth—likely Josun—and he had no idea what Shael wanted from him. Then there was Brusus. Whatever he tried to learn by bribing the Elvraeth was about more than Josun. Rsiran was certain of that.

  He pulled the parchment from his pocket. Lines of script scrawled across the pages in a neat hand. Rsiran couldn’t read the writing, but didn’t know if it was a different language or some sort of code. Each page was much the same.

  He stuffed the pages back into his pocket. Whatever else, he had now stolen from the alchemists as well. How long before they learned what he took?

  Not long. And then none of them would be safe. This time, because of what he did.

  Haern moaned softly. Rsiran turned and saw him trying to sit up. One hand grabbed his head. He blinked, looking around, before suddenly seeming to understand where he was.

  “You got me out.” His voice sounded rough and dry.

  Rsiran nodded. “What happened? You went through the door… and then nothing.”

  Haern’s eyes shifted, the green in them going distant. “Can’t See you again. Just colors.”

  “What happened to you?”

  Haern shook his head. “Don’t know. Stepped through the door. Felt like I was falling. Saw a wash of colors like I did around you. Then I hit something. Can’t remember anything after that.”

  What Haern described was different from what Rsiran had experienced. He’d had none of the sense of motion. Just the colors, almost as if Sliding, though he hadn’t Slid. Then there was the cool tingling across his skin, unlike anything he’d ever felt before. He still didn’t know what that meant.

  “How’d you get me out?”

  “I… I followed you after I realized you weren’t moving anymore.”

  Haern’s eyes narrowed. “How did you know?”

  “The knife,” he answered. Rsiran handed the knife back to Haern who twirled it briefly in his hand before stuffing it back into his waistband in a quick flourish. “It stopped moving.”

  Haern grunted. “Good thing Brusus suggested we carry these.”

  “That was Brusus’s idea?”

  Haern shrugged. “I wasn’t sure it was a good idea, especially after how easily you pulled that knife from me the last time. Not sure I want someone able to kill me before I have a chance to act.”

  “I’m not a killer.”

  Haern’s eyes narrowed. “We’re all killers if given the right motivation.”

  Rsiran remembered what he’d done to Josun, how he’d almost killed him in the palace—in fact thought he had. But that time hadn’t been intentional. He hadn’t meant to poison him. He’d only done what he needed to free Jessa.

  “Then why’d you keep the knife?”

  Haern’s eyes softened and he pushed to stand. “Times like this, I guess. Think you would have gotten to me otherwise?”

  Rsiran wouldn’t have. Without the knife to anchor to, he didn’t think he would have even known where to find Haern. “No.”

  Haern nodded. “What did you find?”

  Rsiran pulled the pages out of his pocket, and Haern took them with a frown. He scanned the pages for a few moments. “You know what these say?”

  “Not a bit. Can you read it?”

  Haern frowned. The scar on his face tightened as he did. “No. Looks to be some sort of code. Nothing I See about it makes any sense.”

  Rsiran found the comment strange. Could Haern really use his ability to See something about the parchment? “Either that or another language.”

  Haern shook his head. “None that I’ve seen. And these numbers seem to correspond, but I’m not sure how. Brusus is pretty good with this kind of thing. Mind if I show him?”

  “I’m not sure that anyone should have that.”

  Rsiran reached for it and Haern held it away. “You fear the alchemists.”

  “I worry what will happen if they learn it was me who entered the guild house. I… I was seen, Haern. Someone came into the room before I had a chance to Slide us out. I know they saw me. There aren’t many who could Slide out of there.”

  Haern took a deep breath and let it out slowly. His eyes lost focus as they did when he tried to See. He blinked once and shook his head. “Nothing. Just the swirls of col
or around you. Doesn’t mean anything.”

  “What about Brusus? Or Jessa?” He hated that he had to worry about what effect he might have on Jessa. That he might have put her in danger again.

  Haern clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Rsiran. I have seen nothing to indicate they are at risk.” Haern pocketed the roll of parchment and turned toward the door. “Find Brusus. He needs to know what happened tonight. There are steps he can take.”

  “And you? Where will you go?”

  Haern’s mouth tightened into a narrow line. “There are steps I need to take as well.”

  * * *

  Rsiran sat in the Wretched Barth alone, waiting for the others. He slumped on the stool at their usual table, leaning over the lukewarm mug of ale that didn’t taste quite the same as usual.

  As he sat, he let his sense of lorcith wander. All around him were forgings he’d made. Some intentionally given, like the bowl in the kitchen or the knife Haern still carried. Even the charm Jessa wore pulled at him. Others he felt were different. The pot here in the Barth. Knives at Della’s home. The decorative fork buried with Lianna in the Aisl.

  Thinking of Lianna put him into an even darker mood than he had already been. Now he didn’t have to fear just Josun Elvraeth, but the alchemist guild learning of someone who could Slide. Haern might think he didn’t have to worry, but how long before someone realized that it had been he in that room?

  And then what would happen? Would he be brought before the council? That would be the traditional route to sentencing. But if Josun Elvraeth were involved, he might face a different penalty. Rather than just facing banishment, he might be subjected to something worse.

  He shivered, trying to push away the dark thoughts. Sitting alone, nothing but the ale for company, made it hard to do.

  The rest of the Barth seemed different too. A bandolist played, and the songs seemed appropriately mournful, nothing like the usual cheery tunes played here. A few others sat along the bar, but no one really talked. Without Lianna, the Barth seemed to have lost some of its vibrancy.