The Dark Ability: Books 1-4

by D. K. Holmberg

  “You knew Jessa would not stay behind. You knew she would force me to include her.”

  Rsiran wondered how clear Haern’s visions were. How much did he know about what would happen? Did they have any choice in what they did?

  “I knew you needed to try to leave her behind. Beyond that…” He shrugged. “I could not See. Only,” he paused and looked from Rsiran to Jessa, “that it was one of the few paths where the possibility of success existed.”

  Rsiran shook his head and closed his eyes. “I still don’t understand.”

  “In time you will.”

  “Is Jessa…”

  “She will be fine. The knife penetrated deeply, but the wound was not tainted. Della healed her. Rest is all she needs now.”

  Rsiran rolled over to look at her again. From where he lay on the floor, all he could see clearly was her hair and the outline of her body in the flickering light of the fire. The near paralyzing fear he had felt at the possibility of losing her had surprised him. Had Josun counted on that?

  “What of Josun?” Rsiran asked.

  A different voice answered. “About that.”

  Rsiran turned. Brusus stood in the doorway, a large binding wrapped around his shirtless torso. Blood stained the bandages. His face was haggard and drawn. Lines wrinkled his forehead that had not been there before. Streaks of thicker white shot through his otherwise dark hair. He held the sword Rsiran had taken back from Josun.

  He leaned against the doorway and looked relaxed, but the strain on his face told Rsiran all he needed to know about Brusus’s strength.

  “You were foolish to attempt what you did,” Brusus said.

  Rsiran nodded. Only a complete fool would try to break into the palace. “I didn’t think I had any other choice.”

  Brusus snorted. “Haven’t I shown you anything? There is always another choice.” He took a deep breath and started to sigh, but a fit of coughing interrupted him. After it passed, he shook his head. “Took nearly dying for me to see what Josun wanted. Had I only trusted Haern, I might have known sooner.”

  “Known what?” Rsiran asked.

  “I told you there were layers to him,” Brusus said. “To Josun, partly this was a game. A game he played where you were one of the pieces. Where I was one of the pieces.” He shook his head. “As far as Josun is concerned, the Elvraeth struggle for position, for power. Most of his life has been spent trying to position himself higher within the family.”

  Rsiran frowned and opened his mouth to comment on Brusus’s birth, but held back the comment when Brusus shot him a look. “He’s not the only one, Brusus,” Rsiran said, thinking of the man from the mines. Others were involved in Josun’s rebellion. And they knew of him, and what he could do. They would come for him. “There are others in this rebellion.”

  “Perhaps,” Brusus said. “But you—and I—were but a piece,” Brusus said. “A distraction. Perhaps bait. All intended as part of his larger plan.”

  Rsiran considered arguing with Brusus, that Josun hadn’t known of Rsiran until he had gone to the warehouse. But was that even true? If Josun spoke in layers, what prevented even that from being the truth? And saying something would only risk revealing what he knew of Brusus, and he wasn’t sure Brusus wanted the rest of the group to know that secret.

  “He wanted to blame me for what he planned. He knew I could Slide.”

  Haern and Brusus looked at each other. Brusus had a worried look on his face.

  “Did he say what he planned?” Brusus asked.

  Rsiran shook his head. He licked dry lips, wishing for water. “He wanted me to poison members of the council. I thought he wanted power, but that wasn’t all.”

  Brusus closed his eyes for a moment. “His demonstration. Power for him, but revenge might be a more accurate term. His sister was exiled. I only learned about it after…” Brusus sighed. “I’ve been more a fool than I realized.”

  Exiled—Forgotten—just like Brusus’s mother.

  “Brusus,” Rsiran started, fearing what he needed to say next. “He will come after us again. The Elvraeth will come for us.”

  “No. He will not. They will not.”

  Rsiran turned back. “What do you mean?”

  It was Haern who answered. “From what I can See, Josun is dead.”

  “Dead?” The knife had only been a distraction, a way to get Jessa away from him. And it had only been his leg.

  “I can tell from your face that you didn’t know,” Brusus said.

  “He was alive when we… I… Slid us away.”

  “And it was Josun who hurt Jessa?” Haern asked. He made no effort to hide the heat in his voice.

  Rsiran nodded. “I pushed one of the knives at him. Hit his leg.”

  Brusus looked down at Rsiran’s pants. “Explains how your pants were damaged. Della fretted over a possible injury, fearing poisoning, especially with that...”

  Rsiran didn’t hear the rest, checking his pocket. A long slice had been torn in his pants where the knife had been pushed out through the fabric. When he brought his hand back it was coated in a white powder. The whistle dust Josun had given him. Had the knife been stained with it?

  He wiped it on his pants, afraid of what it might do to him.

  “You know what that is?” Brusus asked.

  Rsiran nodded. “I was to have mixed it into the council’s drinks, but that wasn’t what he really wanted to do with it.”

  Brusus and Haern shared another knowing look. “Painful. Possibly fatal,” Haern suggested.

  “Whistle dust is a brutal poison and a horrible way to die.” Della came out from behind Brusus and pressed a hand on his dressings before nodding to herself. She appeared even older than the last time, weak and frail.

  Rsiran hated that he had contributed to her change.

  “Don’t you go fretting about me, young man,” she said. “Without you, I think this one might have gotten in deeper than what even he could manage.” Della pointed to Brusus.

  Not for the first time, Della seemed to have Read his thoughts.

  “Whistle dust in liquid is caustic,” she went on. “Throat damage, vomiting, general achiness. A slow death. In the bloodstream, the effect is different. Painful burning. Excessive bleeding. Immediate death.”

  Rsiran rubbed his hand on his pants again, not wanting to be touching the whistle dust any longer than he needed to. “His sister was really exiled?” he asked.

  Brusus frowned. “Several months ago. I haven’t managed to learn why.”

  “Does it matter?” Della asked him. “Now that he’s gone, does any of it matter?”

  Brusus looked over to her with a strange expression on his face.

  Haern watched him, eyes flaring green, and then shook his head once. “Let it go, Brusus. All I See is darkness.”

  Once, Rsiran wouldn’t have been able to believe the Elvraeth exiled their own family. But had his father done anything so different? Hadn’t he exiled Rsiran from his family?

  The only difference was that he didn’t want revenge.

  “But if one of the Elvraeth is dead?” Rsiran had worried about getting caught with the sword. Was it known that he Slid to the palace and killed Josun? And what of the rest of the rebellion? If the thin man from the mine had been involved, there was more to it than even Brusus realized.

  But maybe with Josun dying, it didn’t matter.

  “I haven’t heard anything from the palace,” Brusus said.

  “And you would have?” Rsiran asked, hope seeping into his voice.

  “Yes.”

  Rsiran stared up at the ceiling. The tchalit hadn’t seen him. And if Josun were dead, maybe the thin man wouldn’t come after him. Doing so would only reveal what Josun intended. Maybe they really were safe.

  “You don’t understand the Elvraeth, Rsiran.” Della set her hand on his shoulder. “This would not be the first time something like this happened. This might have gone deeper than most, but…” She closed her eyes, and took a few short brea
ths. “Be reassured Brusus has heard nothing.”

  Brusus watched Della and sighed deeply. Then he pulled his cloak around his shoulders and walked out of Della’s house.

  Haern watched him leave and finally shrugged, pushing himself up to follow Brusus.

  “Thank you, Rsiran,” Della said when they were gone.

  He shook his head. “For what?”

  She met his eyes. “For simply being. Without you, I fear what would have happened to Brusus. What still might happen if he gets the opportunity. It eats at him what could have been, if not for something he had no control over. We must keep him safe from himself. And his past.”

  As she tottered past, she squeezed his shoulder. Warmth spread out from where she touched him. Then she left, disappearing into the back room.

  Rsiran managed to stand. He felt weak but better than he expected. Stranger too. Everyone knew about his abilities now. There was no hiding what he was, what he could do. And no one seemed upset that he could Slide or that he listened to the call of the lorcith.

  He walked over to Jessa and crouched next to her cot, resting with his hand twined in hers, feeling the warmth of the fire spread over him.

  Epilogue

  Rsiran sat at the small table in the back of the Wretched Barth. Soft flute music drifted from the front of the tavern, the melody strangely familiar. The scent of roasted fish came from the kitchen and mingled with the warm ale in front of him on the rough wooden table. His latest forging, a long handled spoon with intricate work along the handle, rested in front of him.

  “What am I supposed to do with this?” Brusus asked. His pale green eyes stared at the spoon, drifting to Rsiran’s mark, as his finger rubbed the carvings. Dark hair slicked back from his face, more grey than it had been, but a vibrancy had returned to his cheeks.

  “I thought you would sell it,” Rsiran suggested.

  Haern laughed, the long scar on his face twitching. Setting down the dice cup, he picked up the spoon and twirled it in his fingers. Seeing the way he twisted the utensil made Rsiran remembered how well he handled the knife. Haern’s eyes flared deeper green for a moment, and then he smiled. “I See someone enjoying this, Brusus. Seems to me there is value in that.”

  With that, he dipped the spoon into the bowl of stew in front of him.

  “Bah!” Brusus winced as he reached past Haern and grabbed the dice. “You know I can’t sell spoons. And you wouldn’t let me sell that sword.”

  Rsiran smiled. The sword was well hidden this time. Safe. The smithy locked so that only Jessa could enter. Other than someone Sliding in, the building was inaccessible.

  “Certainly not this spoon,” Haern said, in between bites.

  Rsiran still wasn’t sure how he felt about Haern. The man had tried to kill him, regardless of what he had Seen. But because of what Haern had done, Rsiran had learned something else about himself. And Jessa lived.

  Brusus grabbed at the spoon, and Haern held it overhead, away from him, splashing stew across the table.

  “Damn, Haern!” Jessa said, returning to the table with a fresh mug of ale.

  Today, she had a pale blue flower tucked into her shirt, the color so much like the lanterns in the palace. Rsiran didn’t think that anyone else saw how she sniffed the flower as she sat. After all these weeks, she showed no signs of the night they’d broken into the palace. The wound had healed fully, not poisoned like Brusus’s injury. And his had finally healed fully.

  Jessa grabbed the spoon from Haern’s hand and slammed it on the table. “Now I’m definitely going to take your money.”

  Rsiran smiled. After everything he had been through, it felt good to be sitting in the Barth with the only real family he had ever known. Jessa looked at Rsiran, her eyes smiling. Her hand slipped under the table and rested on his knee. He closed his fingers over hers and squeezed gently.

  He still didn’t know what would happen to him, or whether there really was more to the rebellion than Josun. Rsiran hadn’t shared his concern about the man he had seen before Sliding from the palace, and so far, there had been no reason to. The Elvraeth had not come looking for someone who had Slid into the palace. Perhaps Della was right—that Elvraeth infighting made it not unusual for such an attack. And though his father had promised to turn him in to the constables, he doubted they would even know where to look. The missing lorcith in his father’s shop—and the fact that the boy had been mining it at night—and whatever Josun had really planned should bother him, but right now he didn’t let it. That was for later. Perhaps one day he would Slide to Ilphaesn, steal the boy from the mines. Rsiran could show him other ways to listen to the music of the lorcith.

  Right now, he didn’t care if the rest of Elaeavn came crashing down around him. He had nearly lost Jessa, lost Brusus, and nearly lost his own life. It was time to start enjoying the gifts he had been given. Including his ability, which it turned out, wasn’t so dark after all. How could it be, when it had saved everyone who mattered?

  The Heartstone Blade

  Chapter 1

  Rsiran Lareth looked at the hard lump of lorcith sitting unshaped on the gleaming anvil of his shop, thinking of all he had been through to get that single hunk of metal. He no longer noticed the bitter bite to the air of the smithy from the lorcith, not like he once had. There were many things he no longer noticed. Since leaving his family, he had changed much. Nearly dying did that to a person.

  He crouched in front of the anvil, studying the lorcith and wondering where in the Ilphaesn mines it had come from. Each nugget he worked made him think back to the time his father had forced him to serve there, the attacks he had endured while serving penance for his ability, even from the boy Rsiran had left behind who shared one of his gifts.

  He could already feel the lorcith pulling at him, demanding a shape. He had to patient, though, and wait for it to tell him what it wanted to become. That was one of his abilities, a gift of his bloodline: he could hear the lorcith sing to him.

  With a sigh, he set the lorcith aside, knowing he couldn’t give it the time it needed. As much as he longed to heat it to glowing red, slowly work the shape from the ore, a nugget of this size could take nearly the entire night to forge, and he didn’t have time, not if he was to meet with the others as planned.

  Yet… something about this piece drew him.

  Knowing he should not take the time, Rsiran could not help himself. Lorcith was in his blood. And the others knew he would be late; he rarely arrived at the same time as Brusus or Haern. Before he fully knew what he was doing, he heated the small lump of lorcith and began working it with the hammer. The ore sang to him with a quiet voice, and he quickly folded it into a longer shape as he listened to it. As usual, Rsiran didn’t fight what the metal demanded of him, letting it fill him with a vision.

  His father had spoken of controlling the ore, of learning mastery over lorcith. That had been part of the reason he had sent Rsiran to Ilphaesn, as punishment for his inability to control the lorcith, rather than succumb to its demands. Instead of learning how to master it, Rsiran allowed it to speak to him and became more attuned to it, better able to listen. Some might say the roles were reversed, and the lorcith controlled him.

  The work did not take long. A pattern emerged that delicately spiraled in a lacy sort of charm that reminded him of the flowers Jessa wore. Under the influence of the lorcith, he envisioned it hanging from a necklace. After it cooled, he brought it to the long table cluttered with his other forgings. This would not have the same market as the knives or the sword he’d made, but he had another purpose for it anyway.

  Then he checked the dwindling stack of lorcith near the forge. Eventually, he would need to Slide for more. Doing so meant visiting the mines and risking the others who mined at night, including the strange boy. After everything the boy had done to him, Rsiran still feared him, but would not put him in danger; nor would he risk being discovered by others who mined at night, He’d heard them, but did not know their location. And taking
from anywhere else in Elaeavn would shine attention on himself that he didn’t need, attention from the miner or smith guild, or worse, the ruling Elvraeth family.

  He glanced at the forge. Coals glowed a cool orange, but he didn’t bother to extinguish them. There was a time when such a thing would have terrified him, but having lived under the fear of his father’s berating, the constant reminder that he wasn’t quite good enough—that he would never be good enough, he’d had to find his own way to survive. Had he listened to his father, he would never have listened to the singing of the lorcith, never learned the lessons the ore itself taught him about forging, skills many of the master smiths had not even learned. Perhaps his listening was the reason his forgings fetched such a premium.

  Never in Elaeavn, though. He did not dare risk that, not after what he had been through. Besides, Brusus managed to export most of what he forged and Rsiran could keep his cut. An arrangement that had worked out well for all of them.

  The rest of the smithy looked little like it had when he first acquired it. The hole in the roof had long been fixed; one of Brusus’s contacts had spent days patching the hole so that water no longer dripped into the smithy when it rained, threatening to damage the iron and copper he had stored here. Rsiran had swept and mopped the floor, repairing the few floorboards that had splintered over time. Brick painstakingly repaired left the walls sturdy. Had the smithy been in any other part of the city, he knew it would have been busy, journeymen and apprentices working the forge, the sounds of hammers on metal filling the air, a heavy smoke hanging over everything like it once had in his father’s shop. But had the smithy been anywhere else in the city, they would never have found it empty.

  Even the shelves had been cleaned, wiped down and now cluttered with his work. Pieces that he had forged over the last few months, each carefully made and inscribed with his mark. It still felt strange to him to think of it as his work.