“Of course, Meryl. You bring credit to yourself and the Diamond Order with your skillful treatment of Calador. I am sure Loremaster Seryn will be most pleased with your work.”
“Thank you, High One, but I could not have done it without Jason’s assistance.”
Tal turned to Jason. “Our thanks to you seem to be never ending, Jason.”
“I just helped out a little is all,” Jason said. He glanced at Lenai as he spoke, almost as if he was speaking to her rather than Tal. Something is bothering him. It was written in every line of the young man’s face and stance. He would have to ask him about it later. He motioned to one of the Warders by the entrance, who came and helped the three from the expedition carry Calador out of the room, followed by Meryl. Once they cleared the door, Loremaster Borin walked in.
“Loremaster Borin,” Tal said with a smile, “Captain Gatlor and the others have returned with the red diamond. Once the Blood Iron arrives, you will be able to begin your work on the staff.” His smile faded as he saw the troubled look on Borin’s face. He had expected the young Loremaster to be relieved that the red diamond had been retrieved so quickly. Instead, Borin looked as if something was weighing on his mind, something he was reluctant to share.
“Loremaster Borin? Is there something wrong?”
Borin cleared his throat nervously. “Well, a-actually, High One,” he stammered, “yes, there is.” He looked at Tal with tormented eyes. “I cannot make the Blood Iron staff.”
“What?” Tal thought he must have misunderstood. “What do you mean you cannot make the staff? Why not?”
“For the same reason we could not escape the Manarach,” Loremaster Brin’s voice broke in as he entered the room followed by Carys, serving as head of the Emerald Order in Reyga’s absence, and Delani. Brin looked at Borin. “The same thought occurred to me this morning.” He turned back to Tal. “The Blood Iron nullifies our powers.”
“Yes,” Borin said. “Although we smelt the ore and heat the metal by hand, we use dimsai for the finish work. Without my power, I cannot make the staff as shown in Nyala’s drawings.”
Tal looked back and forth at Borin and Brin as he struggled with the implications of what they had just told him. Without the staff, the defense of Lore’s Haven, and even Teleria itself, would rely solely upon the power of Nyala, Nivek, and Jason. Unless they were able to somehow nullify the threat from Regor and Airam, if anything were to happen to those three, Teleria would once again find itself under the dominion of the Altered. And if that happened, with no one to stand against them, Regor and Airam would almost certainly exact some form of recompense for the Circle’s previous defiance.
“Are you certain you cannot make the staff?” he asked Borin. It was the only thing he could think to ask.
Borin looked miserable as he answered. “High One, only someone who has learned to work metal without using dimsai would be able to make the staff as it is designed.”
“Like the nasaiken?” Jason asked from behind him.
Tal turned to Jason. “Nasaiken?”
“Yeah, nasaiken,” Jason said. “You know, those people born without any power that you guys kick out? I meant to ask you about them before, but got sidetracked with everything else that was going on. This seems like a good time to bring them up.”
“Who told you of the nasaiken?” Kalen asked.
“They did.” Jason said. Tal heard several gasps at his response.
“They did?” Tal asked. “That is not possible. There are no more nasaiken.”
“Oh, really? There’s a whole village of them on the other side of the Riftlands,” Jason said. “I can’t believe you people would just kick someone out, ‘banish them’ is what they said, just because they couldn’t use dimsai.”
Tal shook his head. “You are wrong, Jason. I do not know who you met, or what they may have told you, but it is incorrect. While it is true that some, fearful of those born without power, would cast them out in times past, that practice was abolished long ago.”
“Didn’t look like it to me,” Jason said. “In fact, one of them even said his own father was a Loremaster.” He looked around at them. “Does the name Elam ring any bells?”
Elam! Tal felt as if his heart had stopped. He stared at Jason, only marginally aware that the other Loremasters had turned to look at him. There was no way Jason could know that name. No one at Lore’s Haven would have told him, not for any reason. Elam was gone. Had been gone for many, many years.
“Impossible,” he whispered.
“Oh, quite possible, High One,” another voice said. “It is indeed Elam. I saw him myself.”
“Loremaster Reyga!” Carys said. “You have returned!”
Tal turned to see Reyga standing just inside the doorway. His hair, face, and clothing were dirty, and tattered strips hung from his robe. His head was down, as if he was too exhausted to raise it.
“Loremaster Reyga,” Tal said, “are you—”
“Jason, you must come with me,” Reyga said, ignoring Tal. “We must leave this place immediately.” He still had not raised his head to look at them.
Tal frowned as he tried to make sense of the last few moments. Something was very wrong here. Reyga should not, would not, have returned without coming to him first. Elam was alive? How could that be? And why had he not returned to Lore’s Haven? What was wrong with Reyga? He tried to force his scrambling thoughts into some semblance of order as Jason started toward Reyga.
“Reyga? Are you okay?” Jason asked, moving toward the Loremaster.
“Jason, wait,” Tal said, but the shock of hearing Elam’s name had drained all of the authority from his voice. Jason did not hear him.
“I am well, Jason, but you must come with me. Your life is in danger here.”
“My life is in danger? Again?” Jason asked, still closing the distance between him and Reyga. “When is it not in danger? From who this time?”
Reyga looked up with a grin and stepped away from the door. His eyes were solid black. “From me.” His head snapped back as an eruption of black power burst from his body, striking Jason full in the chest and hurling him backwards. A split second later, as Jason was falling back, a brilliant flare of dimsai came from Jason’s chest, returning along the path of black energy, and enveloping Reyga in a sparkling sheath of power before blasting the old Loremaster into the wall behind him.
Several moments of stunned silence, and then shouts of alarm filled the room as everyone ran to one or the other of the prone figures. Tal looked back and forth from Jason to Reyga, at a loss as to which one he should go to. If the prophecies were true, Jason was vital to the survival of Teleria. On the other hand, Reyga was a member of the Circle and, perhaps even more important, a longtime friend.
“See to Jason! Get Seryn and the healers!” Tal ordered, as he ran to where Reyga lay slumped against the wall.
*****
Lenai stared at Jason’s motionless form, mesmerized by the wisps of smoke rising up from the charred front of his shirt. She took a step toward him and then stopped, her gaze jumping over to where Reyga lay slumped against the wall, the High One kneeling beside him. Her mind was a total blank, as if what she was seeing defied comprehension. As she struggled to understand what had just happened, one thought finally rose from the stunned recesses of her mind. Her ch’tasa had attacked her ch’nai. How could this have happened? It had never happened, not once in the history of the Shanthi. This is not possible! But it had happened; the impossible had taken place in this very room. Jason! She shook herself into motion and ran to him. She pushed someone out of her way, too desperate to get to his fallen form to wonder who it was, and dropped to her knees, gathering him into her arms.
“Jason!” There was no response, either physically, or through the Bond. It was as if he was not even there. Although there was no reaction to her attempts to revive him, she breathed a sigh of relief as she felt his chest moving underneath her hand. It was weak, but at least he was not dead.
&
nbsp; She focused on his face, his closed eyes and slack mouth, barely aware of the shouts filling the room. She felt someone tugging at her shoulder, but shrugged the hand away. Leave me be! It returned, insistent. Someone was talking to her, but the words sounded muffled. Could they not see she was tending to her ch’nai? The hand and the voice refused to be ignored. She finally looked up from Jason, into the face of a dark-haired young woman kneeling on his other side. She should know who this was, but all that filled her mind was the image of smoke rising from Jason’s body. She struggled to put a name to the face. Meryl. Yes, that was it. Loremaster Seryn’s student.
“Lenai!” Meryl shook Lenai’s shoulder again, her voice finally breaking through Lenai’s shock. “You must let me treat him!”
Treat him. Yes. Meryl was a healer. She would know what to do. Lenai nodded and carefully laid Jason back onto the cold stone before standing and taking a step back.
“Save him,” was all she could manage from numb lips.
“I will,” Meryl replied.
Lenai watched as Meryl’s power flowed over Jason’s chest. Now that Jason was in someone else’s hands, and all she could do was wait, other thoughts forced their way to the surface. Why had Reyga attacked Jason? Her ch’tasa had considered Jason a friend, had even championed him in front of the Circle before they had decided whether Jason could be trusted or not. Reyga had never doubted Jason. And now he attacked him? What had happened to the Loremaster during his absence from Lore’s Haven? The High One had never offered a complete explanation, only saying that Reyga had left to deal with some personal things. What “personal things” could cause him to turn on Jason like this?
Then another, more sobering thought arose. Although most Shanthi did not survive the death of their ch’nai, there were certain circumstances in which their accompanying death was delayed. If one’s ch’nai died because of a deliberate act by another, if they were murdered, the surviving ch’nai was obligated by Shanthi tradition to avenge the death. She looked at Reyga again, centuries of her people’s history weighing down on her heart. If Jason did not survive, the Shanthi way demanded that she kill the Loremaster. How can I do such a thing? Kill one’s ch’tasa? Unthinkable! And yet… She turned back to where Meryl tended to Jason, begging silently for Meryl to succeed. She could hear Meryl speaking as she worked.
“Come back, Jason,” Meryl said. “You must fight!” Her power intensified. “Fight, Jason, please!” Then she turned. “Loremaster Seryn! Help me!”
Lenai watched as Seryn ran over from where she had been tending Reyga and dropped to the ground beside Meryl. Shimmering argent force erupted from the Loremaster’s hands and enveloped Jason’s chest. “No!” Seryn whispered as she worked. “The power refuses me. This cannot happen!”
Lenai squinted as the glare from Seryn’s efforts grew even more intense, almost blinding her as the Loremaster threw all of her strength at the malevolent power that had invaded Jason’s body. Her fight to save Jason cast harsh shadows towering against the stone wall, looming over them like dark witnesses to Seryn’s struggle. What Lenai could see through the fierce brilliance blazing on his body was not encouraging. Please, Jason.
Then the power vanished.
Lenai blinked to clear the spots from her eyes. Before the room came back into focus, she felt a crushing pain in her chest. She gasped for breath as she dropped to her hands and knees. Then she leaned back, sending a silent cry of agony toward the ceiling as the pain became a searing fire, threatening to consume her from the inside, then a tearing, a rending, as if her very soul were being torn in two, until it finally became an excruciating combination of all three. She crossed her arms tightly across her body and hunched over, trying to push the pain away.
As she dragged breath after tortured breath through clenched teeth, she understood. There could be only one reason for pain like this. Now she knew why almost none survived. How could anyone live with this? She understood, too, why vengeance was required. It was not tradition; it was not simply what should be done. It was inescapable, irrefutable. Anguish such as this demanded retribution. She lifted wide eyes to Seryn. The Loremaster sat on her knees beside Jason, one hand on her bowed head, the other resting lightly on his chest. Meryl was shaking her head slowly, her eyes squeezed shut and one hand over her mouth, as if trying to hold in the quiet sobs Lenai could hear over the pounding of her own heart.
“I could not save him,” Seryn said, her voice like ashes from a cold fire. “Jason Bennett is dead.”
Lenai closed her eyes and bent over again, her forehead coming to rest on the hard stone floor.
Her ch’nai was dead.
Now she would have to kill her ch’tasa.
Changing Things Up
Darkness, broken here and there by occasional flashes of color and sparks of light. A chorus of whispery voices filled the void.
“This one is dimsai.”
“This one is not dimsai.”
“We are dimsai.”
“The other is dimsai.”
“We are the other.”
“We are not this one?”
“We are this one.”
“It is confusing.”
“This one is the other.”
“This one is not the other.”
“This one’s call is strong.”
“The other’s call is stronger.”
“The other is us.”
“We are the other.”
“We are this one.”
“We are both.”
“We are all.”
The voices were familiar. He’d heard them before, but he thought he’d been dreaming. Am I dreaming now? The last thing he remembered was walking toward Reyga. Then, nothing. Blackness. He had to find out what was going on.
“Hello?”
“This one speaks.”
“To us?”
“To us!”
“How?”
“Why?”
“None speak to us.”
“Who are you?” At least he’d gotten their attention, whoever, or whatever, they were.
“This one asks.”
“We are dimsai.”
“You are dimsai.”
“You are not dimsai.”
“We do not understand.”
“Explain.”
Jason stared at the sparkles, which appeared to have multiplied since he began talking, like a crowd gathering to listen to a speaker. “What do you mean, you are dimsai? Dimsai is alive? How is that possible?”
“We are dimsai.”
“And you came here through one of the rifts? What about your world? The world you came from?”
Instead of an answer, a storm of confusing thoughts and images flooded his mind. Then, a twist of reality, and he was not Jason anymore. He was dimsai. He was many and one, multitude and individual, all at the same time. We are dimsai. There was no loss of self, but an equal sense of being part of a larger whole. He was here, but he was also everywhere else. Then there was not just he, but an intermingling of he and they, the combination gaining strength as his individuality faded. He fought to hold onto his own identity. I am Jason Bennett. My name is Jason. My name is… I am… I… As soon as the words crossed his thoughts, they were swept away, disappearing into the maelstrom of dimsai. He felt a twinge of fear, and then that too was gone. We are dimsai.
He/they sensed their surroundings. Chaotic, primal. There was no rational thought, only sensation, raw emotion, need, desire. He/they went where he/they desired, no restraint, no purpose other than to go. Here, there, it didn’t matter. They obeyed no sense of order, merely followed their own whims, indulged any tiny sense of curiosity. Studied, observed, then ignored and moved on, what was before now forgotten. An urge would strike them, a moment later it was disregarded. They knew the place where they were. The Here. It was. It had always been.
Then a shattering. A tearing. A distortion in the Here. An opening, leading someplace that was not the Here. Curiosity. With no reason other than desire, t
hey poured through the opening, into the Not Here.
Newness! Difference! This Here was not like the before Here. They sensed order, stability, direction. So much new in this Here! So much to explore! Desire and curiosity pulled them in all directions. They spread out to explore this new Here, following wherever impulse took them. Part of them noticed some collections of matter and energy unlike anything else they had found so far in this Here. They explored these collections. As they observed, they saw the collections beginning to change, to dissemble. They looked closer. Bonds were breaking, dissolving. A whim, and they filled the spaces where the bonds collapsed, holding the collections together with themselves. Then…
Something different! A thing they had never experienced! What was this? As they held the collections together, the collections began to transform them. Order began overriding chaos. Thought began overriding emotion. They became aware. The collections were other beings, so unlike themselves that they did not realize it at first. But now, they were part of these others in this Here. They understood. If they had not replaced the vanishing bonds, these collections would no longer be. As they restored more and more of the failing bonds, they became more aware of this world, of the needs and desires of these others. This awareness spread to the rest of them, who were not joining with the others, but were still part of the whole. As they explored more of this Here, they found other beings, like these, but whose collections of matter and energy were stable, not needing them to become part of them.
But the new beings were like the others they had saved. “Saved.” A new concept. The idea of a “concept” itself was new. They took what they had gained from the others and became sentient. A chorus of voices, a multitude and yet one.
As time passed, they began responding and interacting with these others they were now a part of: the self-others. And then they began interacting with the other beings, not like the self-others, but enough so that they could respond to them. The beings would call, they would respond. The reasons for the calls were meaningless. They responded to the desires of the callers. Some of the calls were strong, others not as strong. The calls of the self-others were strongest of all. Until now.
Soul of Power Page 10