The Dark Ability: Books 1-4

by D. K. Holmberg

  Pulling the spyglass from his pocket, he scanned the bay, looking for signs of Firell’s ship. Not for the first time, he wished he had Jessa’s ability. Sight would be incredibly useful for this kind of thing. Besides, it would make Sliding distances easier, taking away some of the need for familiarity to ensure a safe Slide.

  Instead, he had to work with what he had available. The glass brought everything into sharper focus. Oranges and reds from the setting sun gleamed off small waves cresting in the bay. A triangular sail on the nearest boat—barely larger than a dinghy—puffed out with the wind. A long rod hung over the side, but Rsiran didn’t see anyone on the boat. Shifting the spyglass, he looked farther out over the water and caught sight of one of the massive flat-bottomed fishing boats that could sail into the docks.

  At that distance, he couldn’t make out much in the way of detail. What must it be like working the lines, reeling in fish day after day? How could anyone enjoy standing being surrounded by that much water? Much better to spend his time hammering at the forge, feeling the heat of the coals press against your cheeks, sweat running down your back as you hammered until the metal began to take its shape.

  As he turned the spyglass further, he realized he had been mistaken about what he thought was another fishing boat. It had a pair of enormous masts, its square sails filled with wind, pushing the ship forward, drifting it slowly back toward the city. It turned and Rsiran recognized the shape of the figurehead on the bow. Firell’s ship, and now returning toward shore.

  Rsiran was too late. Firell might only have been gone for a few days, but the fact that he’d left at all made it likely he’d unloaded the lorcith he had stored in the hold. Safer that way, he knew, better to keep what he smuggled away from the guilds, but he still couldn’t come up with a good reason why Firell would have that much lorcith in the first place. As far as he knew, taking it served no purpose, other than to deprive the Elvraeth. And if he had that much lorcith, why wouldn’t he have it brought it to Rsiran, or Brusus at least, to have it shaped into something saleable? If it was Josun that he’d overheard on Firell’s ship, then what did Josun want with the lorcith?

  Rather than Sliding, he made his way along the shore road, walking slowly past a series of shops. Most were run down, paint faded or peeling. None had signs hanging outside, not like the nicer shops found in Upper Town, or even those on the border like his father’s. At least, like it had been. Before.

  Rsiran sighed. Wind pressed against his face, cool and crisp. Aches from yesterday slowly worked out of him as he walked, leaving him feeling better than he had in a few days. Yet… he couldn’t escape the threat hanging over him. Josun Elvraeth lived and had come for Lianna. That he went after Brusus didn’t make much sense, but what if Brusus was not his intended target? What if Josun simply wanted Rsiran to be aware that he lived? A message.

  He reached the wide road heading up through the city when he collided with someone.

  Rsiran bounced back a step, quickly stuffing a hand into his pocket as he reached for one of his knives. The woman in front of him looked offended that he would even touch her. The basket she carried fell from her hands, dropping to the cobbled street. Rsiran hurried to help her lift it but she waved him off.

  “Don’t bother.” She pulled the basket away from him and turned back up the street.

  He recognized the voice, but not the dress or the posture. “Alyse?”

  Only days before, he had thought he’d seen her. But she should not be here, not in Lower Town and not dressed like this in a white dress stained with several day’s worth of grime. Once sleek black hair now hung at her ears, cut short. Only the lorcith chain hanging from her neck told him it was she. It pulled on him, and he recognized the craftsmanship that had gone into making it. If nothing else, his father had been skilled.

  She froze. Then she turned slowly, bright green eyes widening slightly. “Rsiran?” She looked around the street, and Rsiran wondered if she looked for someone to call to for help. When she turned her attention back to him, she studied him a moment. “You look… different.”

  He didn’t know whether to take that as a compliment or not.

  “Father said you were banished.”

  “By him. Not the council. Why are you here?”

  Her face darkened. “You suddenly care what happens to your family?”

  He took a step back, startled by the heat of her words. “I always cared. It wasn’t always returned.”

  The corners of her eyes softened. “Go back to wherever you live now, Rsiran. We’ll be fine.”

  Alyse straightened her back and turned away from him.

  As she started back up the street, he blurted out, “What happened to the shop?”

  She did not turn back to him. “What do you know of it?”

  Rsiran hurried toward her, stopping in front of her. “I know that it’s empty. After generations of Lareth smiths, now it stands shuttered.”

  Her eyes narrowed slightly. “That was always going to be the case.”

  He tried to ignore the barb, but it cut too close to what he felt. Had he stayed with his father, had he just been willing to serve out his sentence in the mines, would he have been able to return home? To apprentice with his father?

  To suppress the gifts the Great Watcher had given him. Never know the call of the lorcith or the freedom he felt with each Slide? No… returning home had not been the answer. But that didn’t change how he wished there had been another way.

  “What happened?”

  Alyse’s eyes drifted to the basket she carried. Rsiran smelled the stink of fish coming from it and realized the basket carried more than just the three of them would need.

  “You’re working?”

  Her eyes flashed and a flush came to her cheeks.

  “But why? Why would you need to work?”

  Even as he asked, he understood. The shop had always provided enough for the family, but the last year had been difficult. Jobs were less plentiful, especially those that paid well, and their father had fallen into the arms of ale. When Rsiran had still lived at home, he’d known that money grew more and more scarce.

  When she looked up, her eyes were red. “Why do you suddenly care?” she whispered. “You would not do what he asked. You became—”

  “Nothing,” he snapped. “I became who the Great Watcher intended me to be. My ability is no darker than you trying to Read me.” He made certain to push his reinforced barriers firmly in place so that she couldn’t Read him. When he’d been younger, it had always been an expectation that she’d Read past his barriers. He no longer feared her as he once had.

  Her face flushed more.

  “Don’t bother. I have learned much since we last saw each other. I doubt you will crawl through my mind as easily as you once did.”

  She glared at him.

  “But, since I can’t Read you, what happened to our father?”

  Alyse glanced up the street. “I can’t…”

  Rsiran grabbed the basket from her. “I’ll carry this. You walk.”

  She opened her mouth to argue, as if to scold him like she always had when they were younger, but closed it. Then she nodded. “You have changed,” she said softly.

  “It seems we all have.”

  Alyse studied his face for a moment as they walked. “He lost the shop,” she began. “But you know that.”

  “I found it empty.”

  Alyse continued up the street, veering off onto a side street Rsiran didn’t know, one running along the length of Lower Town. Rows of narrow buildings crammed together. The smell of bread and roasting meats mixed with the smells near the shore, reminding him of the market.

  “Business trailed off after…”

  When she didn’t seem like she would continue, he asked, “After what?”

  “After the mining guild accused him of stealing lorcith.”

  Rsiran almost tripped and without thinking what he was doing, Slid forward a step to steady himself. Alyse glared at
him.

  “Why would the guild accuse him of stealing lorcith?”

  She cast a sideways glace at him. “You really think you need to ask that question?”

  Rsiran nodded.

  “Because he wanted to protect you.”

  “Protect me? He never did anything to protect me. Only punish me.” The heat in his words surprised him. After all this time, he still felt anger at how his father had treated him. Even after getting away, he still felt that emotion. “You can’t imagine what it was like being in the darkness of the mines. The way the stone presses down around you. The threat of the other miners willing to hurt you at any time.” He said nothing about the lorcith calling him, demanding that he free it from the stone. Alyse didn’t understand him Sliding; she would understand that ability even less.

  She drew her back straight. For a moment, with the way she looked at him, she reminded him of the Alyse of his youth. “Yes, protect you. When the guild came to him demanding to see proof that he used lorcith, he claimed failure rather than reveal that you had been stealing from him.”

  “I did not steal lorcith from father’s shop.”

  They had stopped on an intersecting street. The buildings lining the street reminded him of the alley outside the smithy, stone cracked and crumbling, and halfhearted attempts to repair it having failed. Pale painted walls faded, nothing like the more vivid colors found near Upper Town. Even the drains in the stone meant to divert rainwater out into the bay were plugged like they were near his smithy, fetid water pooling. It was a place he never would have expected to find Alyse.

  A few others made their way along the street, most dressed in the same rough fabric that made Alyse’s dress. Rsiran’s finer clothes, finely woven cotton Brusus had procured for him, seemed just as out of place here as it did near his smithy. At least along the shore, the variety of people making their way kept him from standing out. Here, he felt as out of place as he would if he were to Slide to Upper Town in the daylight.

  “We know what your ability makes you.”

  “What it makes me? You really believe that my ability to Slide…” He lowered his voice and glanced down the street. For a moment, he thought he saw a flash of bright red fabric that reminded him of Shael, but it disappeared. “That it changes me? What of Father’s ability? Did it push him to drink? Did it push him to hit me?”

  Alyse took a deep breath. “But he saw you in his shop. Do not deny that.”

  Rsiran wouldn’t deny that he had. “I came for something else. Not lorcith.”

  Alyse sniffed. “If not you, then someone else? Will that be your story when the guild finds you? When you are brought by the constables before the Elvraeth?”

  The Elvraeth might punish him for many things, but stealing lorcith from the guild would not be one. “The guild does not care about anything other than production. And I do nothing that impedes production.”

  “After all this time, you do not need to convince me, Rsiran.”

  Still, that someone had stolen lorcith from his father’s shop worried him. That was the one thing Rsiran had made a point not to do. “You think I needed to steal from father?”

  She shrugged and then nodded. “You have as much admitted that you did.”

  “I told you that I went to his shop, not that I took lorcith. Besides, why should I have the need when he gave me all the access I could ever want?” He had told his father the same thing when confronted.

  Her eyes widened. “That is forbidden!”

  Forbidden. “Just like sending his son to work the mines? Sentenced as if I were some criminal needing to be punished?”

  Alyse stared at him but said nothing.

  “Why are you here?” Rsiran asked.

  “Where else am I to go?”

  “Not here. Home?”

  She laughed bitterly. “Still so foolish, aren’t you Rsiran? After Father lost his shop, we had no place left to go. When he left us… This is home now.”

  “What do you mean he left you?”

  “I thought you said you went to his shop?”

  Rsiran nodded, unable to suppress the strange sense of emptiness he’d felt when he found his father’s shop abandoned. “I did. It was empty. Nothing remained except a few scraps of paper.”

  “And why would Father clear out the shop?”

  Rsiran sighed. He did not want to argue with Alyse. But seeing her brought back all the old memories he had. “Where did he go?”

  Alyse only shook her head. “One day he was here. Coming home, drunk as usual. The next day, he never came home. Mother did not do well. So I had to do what I could to keep us fed. Had you… had you…”

  Her face twisted as she trailed off. Whether embarrassed or angry, he couldn’t tell.

  Alyse grabbed the basket from him and turned, running away from him down the street.

  Rsiran didn’t bother to Slide after her.

  Chapter 23

  After Alyse left him, Rsiran wandered through Lower Town. Seeing her like that, knowing that she had taken to working at the market, was strange. Alyse had always expected to marry into wealth, especially after her abilities manifested. Both Sight and Reading. Gifts to make any in Elaeavn proud. Now she lived no better than he did. Worse probably. At least he didn’t work carting fish up from the markets. He had the forge, and Sliding didn’t restrict him.

  The sun tilted toward the horizon as he walked. He debated returning to the smithy and working on Shael’s project, but without a way to follow the plans, there seemed little he could do.

  Thoughts of the alloy lingered. If Josun Elvraeth lived, having access to the alloy would be a way to keep him and his friends safe, but he had no idea how to mix the metal with lorcith. From his experience, there wasn’t a way to mix anything into lorcith. It had to be worked in its pure form. All the master smiths thought that the case, including his father.

  But did the alchemists? If anyone in the city—outside the Elvraeth—were to know, it would be the alchemists. Their location in the city was a carefully guarded secret. Supposedly none but the guild masters knew how to find the guild house, but Rsiran had an edge that others did not. Wherever the alchemists resided, they would have lorcith. He could use his sense of lorcith to guide him.

  The problem was sensing the lorcith. Here in the city, he felt too close. There was another place he could go, one that he did not visit as often as he once had. The last time had been when he’d needed a way to clear his head after visiting Firell’s ship. This time, he needed the distance and view of the city he couldn’t get anyplace else.

  Rsiran made his way into a narrow alley. He checked to see if anyone else wandered nearby, but needn’t have bothered. Even the street had been empty. Nothing but refuse and the stench of filth lined the alley.

  He Slid and emerged atop Krali Rock.

  No wind rustled his clothing tonight. As before, he looked down at the city. Candles flickered in some of the windows. He made a point of not looking toward the palace, ignoring the blue lantern light shining through the windows there. Nothing good would come of turning his attention to the palace, of getting mixed up in the Elvraeth politics. Already he had learned that lesson well.

  He sat on the rock and closed his eyes. Then he listened.

  Lorcith called softly. Some he recognized quickly. His smithy had a mixture of raw ore and that which he’d already forged. It drew on him, calling with a distinct voice. Were he to want to, he thought he could pull the sword to him even from here. Strange that he should have such a connection to it. He remembered its making, the way the metal had drawn him along, pulling its shape out more quickly than any other forging he’d made before. And none had gone quite the same since.

  He pushed away the sense of the sword. It drifted to the back of his mind, willing to let him ignore it for now. Other forgings of his scattered about the city. These pulled on him, as well, almost as if simply to announce their presence. Rsiran acknowledged them and pushed them away too.

  Then he fe
lt the strange sense of the alloy at the palace. With the other sense of lorcith ignored, this threatened to overwhelm him, as if it urgently demanded his attention. Rsiran took several slow breaths before he managed to push this sense away, burying it deep in his mind.

  All he had left were scattered senses of unshaped lorcith. A few seemed focused between Lower Town and Upper Town. It took a moment to realize that they likely came from the smiths there. Not nearly as much lorcith as he expected to sense. The smiths together had less than he had stored in the crate Shael had brought him.

  Rsiran shifted his awareness away from the smiths. A few other small collections existed in the city—barely more than nuggets—but otherwise, he didn’t feel anything. As he considered giving up, he felt something else. Something unexpected.

  The alloy.

  The lorcith of the alloy pulled on him differently than in the pure form. As the alloy, he had no sense of awareness, none of the pleading desire that he felt when working with lorcith. This felt muted. Had he not pushed away all the other lorcith, he might never have felt it.

  The alloy in the palace called to him, but it wasn’t the only source. There was another, small and near the palace, though separate. Firmly in Upper Town.

  Few of the guilds were in Upper Town, but if any would be found there, Rsiran suspected the alchemists would find a way to be near the Elvraeth. Or perhaps it was the other way around. Would the Elvraeth allow the alchemists to be too far from them? Wouldn’t they want their secrets protected?

  Rsiran Slid off Krali and toward the palace. When he emerged from the Slide, he kept the other lorcith pushed into the distance and listened for the alloy. This close to the palace, he struggled ignoring the alloy found here, but he hadn’t wanted to emerge too far away. Rsiran knew parts of Upper Town better than Lower Town, but there was no telling who might be out on the streets. There weren’t the interconnected alleys all about Upper Town like were found in Lower Town, and streetlights lit the roadways with wide swaths of orange light.