The Dark Ability: Books 1-4

by D. K. Holmberg

  “I don’t plan to walk across the yard.”

  Rsiran stared at the dark building near the center of the palace lawn that he knew to be made almost entirely of lorcith. The last time they’d come, he’d used one of his knives to gain access. Would he be able to Slide this time?

  “And then what?” Haern asked. “You plan to walk through the palace? You aren’t dressed well enough to go unnoticed.”

  “That’s why he brought me.” Jessa crouched next to him and watched Haern. “You think me incapable of such a sneak?”

  “You’re incredibly skilled. But where you’re going, they know how to sniff out sneaks. Rsiran’s ability masks him somehow. I’m not sure it carries over to you.”

  “He’s not going without me.”

  Haern flickered his eyes over to Rsiran. “That’s how you feel? Knowing you might not be able to protect her once you get into the palace?”

  “I need her with me, Haern,” Rsiran answered softly.

  Haern took a slow breath, his eyes losing focus as they did when he attempted a vision. “Go. I’ll do what I can to give you time. But be safe. There are things even I can’t See about the palace, but I—” He cut off, his head snapping around to the left. “Go!” he hissed.

  Rsiran followed the direction of his gaze. One of the palace guards moved through the shadows toward them, as if he knew where they were.

  “Haern—”

  Haern shook his head, already moving down the wall, fading into the shadows. Rsiran didn’t understand how he managed to move so stealthily.

  Without waiting, he squeezed Jessa’s hand, focused on his target, and Slid.

  Chapter 36

  They emerged inside the lorcith building.

  Rsiran had been here before, making the Slide less dangerous than it otherwise would have been. The air stank of dampness and bitter lorcith. Muted sounds drifted toward him, but he couldn’t tell if they came from the other side of the door or down the stairs. Very little light made it to him, leaving him again in the dark, nothing but the lorcith to guide him, much like the Ilphaesn mines.

  “Do you see anything?” he asked.

  “Stairs. Move carefully. I’ll guide you.”

  Rsiran pulled against her hand. They could walk, but doing so meant they would spend more time in the palace. More time for the Elvraeth to learn he’d come. And Haern was right. What had they changed since he last had come? Someone would have learned of their presence, and the Elvraeth already knew Sliders existed. Would they have moved walls and created unfamiliar barriers, or didn’t they know about the need for some familiarity with a Slide?

  More than that, he had no idea where in the palace he planned to go. Did they wander, searching for places that might be heavily fortified indicating the Elvraeth hid something? Della suggested what they sought would be deep within the palace and heavily guarded. But how would they find that?

  Every step sounded loud in his ears, as if he thundered through the palace.

  How long until they were discovered?”

  If they wandered blindly, how long would it take to find what they needed? Too long, he decided. Long enough that he didn’t dare wait.

  That left searching a different way. Rsiran thought he might be able to find where he needed to go, but not without focusing.

  “Wait,” he whispered to Jessa.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to learn where we need to go.”

  She said nothing. He listened to the lorcith, letting the sense of the metal call to him. All around him, it practically pressed upon him, an oppressive sense different from what he’d grown accustomed to while working in Ilphaesn. At least then, he hadn’t really known what he felt. Over time, his connection to lorcith had strengthened to where he could pinpoint the smallest of his forgings from a great distance. Even unshaped ore he could feel from a distance.

  This was different.

  The lorcith here seemed a physical sense. Heavy and demanding his attention.

  Rsiran closed his eyes and focused on his breathing. As he did, he pushed away the smaller sense of lorcith near him. That of Jessa’s charm or her knives. The sense of the knives he wore. More distantly, the sense of the sword and other forgings he’d made. Some of those forgings were here in the palace. That realization nearly made him lose his focus.

  But he pushed them away.

  It left him with the yearning call of the lorcith building.

  Rsiran listened to it, slowly understanding what it wanted.

  And then he pushed that away as well.

  Once done, he felt emptiness around him.

  Pushing away the sense of lorcith was dangerous. Haern could See him when he did which meant the Elvraeth could also. But it also left Rsiran more attuned.

  He listened.

  At first, he heard nothing. Silence. Only the sound of his breathing and the beating of his heart. There was a distant awareness of Jessa, but he’d had to push that away as he cleared his mind, or the lorcith she carried with her would have overwhelmed him.

  Then, distantly, he had the sense of something. Not the alloy. That was a hard clash of awareness when he recognized it. And not lorcith. That was softer, eager, and one he could ignore.

  Was it pure heartstone?

  This was warm and welcoming and seemed to draw him forward. If he followed it, there was no telling where it would take him. Possibly out of the palace and away from his goal. But without knowing another way, he worried they wouldn’t find what the Elvraeth hid in the first place.

  Intruding on that sense was the distant awareness of lorcith moving toward him. His forgings within the palace.

  They had to move.

  “Hang on,” he whispered.

  “Where are you Sliding?”

  He appreciated that she didn’t question otherwise. Jessa trusted him.

  “I don’t know.”

  She squeezed his hand tightly around hers.

  Then he focused on what he sensed and Slid.

  The feeling was nothing like a normal Slide. That was colors and movement and a hint of bitterness that reminded him of lorcith. And it wasn’t anything like what he experienced pushing through the alloy. That was hard, and he felt it as he squeezed through the barrier it created.

  This felt warm and welcoming and strangely vast. Rather than a sense of movement, he felt as if he shifted. The only thing he could compare it to was the way he’d had to Slide in Venass.

  As he Slid, Jessa was torn from him.

  At first, she was holding his hand, Sliding with him, and then she was not.

  He tried calling out her name in the middle of the Slide but nothing came out.

  And then it was done.

  He emerged surrounded by blue light that reminded him of the heartstone lanterns. This glowed differently, deeper and purer than that light. It blinded him.

  Rsiran stumbled, sprawling across a warm floor, one cheek smacking against it. As it did, Rsiran lost the concentration he’d been holding. The sense of lorcith flooded back into him, almost enough to overwhelm him.

  It was everywhere.

  The sense was different from before and not the oppressive sense he had when he Slid into the palace building. This was vast like the ocean rather than like Ilphaesn. And he sensed no voids as he did within the mines, nothing he could use to guide his steps.

  He pushed up, rubbing at his eyes to clear them. Slowly, the soft blue light began to fade, and he could see the space around him. He stood in a massive room, so large that he couldn’t clearly see the walls. Overhead, lights flickered, as if stars twinkling in the sky. The air was warm and smelled familiar in a way he couldn’t quite place. He had the vague sense of welcome.

  Five distinct orbs rested atop pedestals within a ring in the floor. Each glowed with that pure light. One pulsed slightly, drawing his eye. What was this?

  And how could he get back out? He might have Slid here, but he didn’t know if he could find his way back out. And Jessa wa
s nowhere to be seen.

  His heart hammered. When first learning to Slide with her, he’d worried about what would happen if he lost her during the Slide. Where would she end up? Would she carry onward to where they traveled or would she emerge along the way?

  He listened for the lorcith in her charm and knives, but with lorcith all around him, he couldn’t focus well enough.

  Rsiran tried to steady his breathing, but failed. He couldn’t clear his head enough to listen for her. She might be stuck, trapped somewhere in the palace. Or worse, caught in that place between Slides.

  The glowing orbs surged brighter with one still pulsing slightly, beckoning him toward it.

  The pedestal seemed made of twisted wood, almost like vines… or roots of some great trees… weaving together to hold the orb almost at eye level. The blue light came from deep within it, vibrant and pure. If he stared too long, Rsiran felt as if he might be drawn into it.

  He started to turn away, but paused.

  Isn’t this what he came for? Didn’t he want to know what the Elvraeth protected?

  Nothing about this was like anything he’d ever encountered. And he knew with a deep certainty, the Forgotten and Venass could not be allowed to reach here. Had he not had the ability to sense lorcith—and the heartstone—he doubted he would have been able to find it. Which meant that they wouldn’t be able to find it.

  No longer did he want to remain. He wanted to return, find Della and ask about the orbs. And after that, he hoped Venass wouldn’t reach him. All he wanted was to live in peace, Jessa at his side.

  First, he had to find her.

  But how? While he felt lorcith all around him, he had no way of sensing her.

  He tried to Slide a step away from the glowing blue lights and failed.

  Sweat slicked his hands, and he wiped them on his pants. He was trapped.

  Chapter 37

  Rsiran looked around the room, searching for some other way to go back. If this room was in the palace, then it made sense there would be some way to access it other than Sliding, especially given the way the Elvraeth had protected the palace against Sliding.

  He moved away from the softly glowing orbs. The nearest one still pulsed slowly. If Rsiran stared too long, he felt he would be drawn to pick it up and slip it into his pocket. After everything he’d been through over the last few months, the last thing he wanted to do was take something like that from the Elvraeth.

  A high wall rose overhead in the pool of shadows at the edge of the light. The air felt different, stirring with a soft breeze that touched his cheeks and cooled him. Rsiran touched the wall and found it warm like the rest of the room. Shapes were etched into the wall, but he couldn’t see through the shadows to discern what they were, whether writing or simply decorative. He traced his way around, following the wall, trailing his hand along as he went.

  Rather than running straight, the wall circled the room. He didn’t find any other access. No doors interrupted the wall. Nothing that would provide a way out.

  He looked up. The distant lights that twinkled in the darkness above could be open sky, but he had no way of reaching it. And without being able to Slide, he couldn’t escape.

  Panic sent his heart racing. The Elvraeth would find him. And then what? Would they force him to tell them why he’d come? If he couldn’t Slide from here, they must have some method of restricting abilities, more than what the Elvraeth chains had managed.

  Or did they?

  Rsiran looked back at the lights. He’d managed to Slide here. Had the Elvraeth blocked his ability, they would have prevented him from reaching this room. But they hadn’t.

  He slowly looped around the ring that surrounded the pedestals. Each glowing orb looked the same, resting on a similar pedestal made of the same twisted wood. But when he stared at them, actually studied them, subtle differences slowly emerged.

  At first, he saw a difference to the light in them. He’d thought the blue glow coming from them the same, but the more he studied them, the more he realized there was a texture to the light.

  Rsiran frowned, trying and failing to understand what he saw.

  Could the shape of the orbs be different as well? Without touching one, it was hard to tell—the light glowed too brightly for him to know—but he suspected the shape had something to do with the light.

  He continued in the circuit around the orbs, finally stopping before the one that pulsed. The light from this one was definitely different from the others. But why? What about this orb made it different?

  Rsiran circled the pedestal. The twisting wood looked no different from the others, so it was not a measure of the pedestal that made the orb different. In the moments when the light pulsed lower, he almost saw the shape of it.

  As he studied it, it pulled on him.

  Before knowing what he was doing, his face was barely a hand’s width from it.

  This close, he felt warmth radiating from it and knew the orbs were the reason the room felt so warm. It even had a distinct odor, a little like lorcith, but sweeter. Something about it reminded him of Jessa.

  Rsiran needed to get out of here and get to Jessa.

  But there was nothing that would help him escape.

  Nothing but these orbs.

  He steadied his breathing, hoping to slow his pounding heart, and wiped sweaty hands on his pants. Then, without thinking too much about what he did next, he grabbed the orb he’d been studying in both hands and lifted it from its pedestal.

  And then he held his breath.

  The blue light within the orb faded, leaving only a white, almost colorless pulsing light. It began pulsing more rapidly, faster than he could blink. Rsiran felt himself drawn forward—pulled—almost as if Sliding.

  But he had no other sense of movement. No flashes of color as he was accustomed to seeing as he Slid. No scent of lorcith. Just a feeling of movement.

  And then blackness all around.

  The orbs had all gone dark. The air turned cold. He realized he still held his breath and forced himself to suck in a breath. It was cold and tasteless.

  Then white light flashed below him, distantly. He no longer saw the floor, the ring, the orbs.

  For a moment, Rsiran had no idea what he saw, but as he became aware that the sense of the lorcith all around him had faded, he realized what he saw below him was the ore itself, not just sensing it as he always had before but seeing it, in its raw, almost brilliant form but from high above.

  Some of the lights he saw were massive. One in particular seemed incredibly vast, and he wondered if it was Ilphaesn. But how was he seeing this?

  There were other lights below him, some nearly as large. Above what he suspected was Ilphaesn—to the north, he supposed, though direction had little meaning where he was—there was another bright light. He frowned. Could that be Asador? To the east was another, as bright as the last. That would be Thyr. Dozens of other lights flashed. Some he had no idea of what they would represent, and others were separated by great distances, as if separated by the sea.

  How was he seeing this?

  And did it really represent what he thought it did or was this simply some vision of the orb?

  “What is this?” he asked aloud.

  He didn’t expect an answer, and none came.

  The lights shifted, dimming until he couldn’t see them anymore. Slowly, new lights appeared below him, a deep blue that both resembled the light from the orbs and could not compare. As before, some of the lights burned brighter. One in particular, not near where any of the others had been, glowed with a steady, deep blue, nearly the match of the light of the orb he still held in his hands. Within the darkness, Rsiran couldn’t tell where this would be—or even what the lights represented. There were others, though most were smaller, only a pale blue, with the vaguest similarity to the orb. There weren’t as many as the white lights he’d seen before, and he had no sense of location as he had with the other light.

  Then they faded.

  T
he light of the orb he held faded with it.

  Rsiran was cast into darkness so profound, he felt it in his bones.

  He shivered.

  Because of the time spent in the mines, he hated being in the dark. It left him with a crawling sensation at the back of his mind, like someone crept up behind him. This time was no exception, but the sense came from all around.

  Rsiran turned, looking for who might be near him.

  There was nothing.

  He held out the orb, wishing for light to spring from it again, but it remained dim and grew cool in his hand.

  The presence neared. Rsiran didn’t know what he felt, only that he knew he was no longer alone. And whatever approached was enormous.

  Then it stopped.

  Rsiran held his breath again.

  Moments passed. Time had no meaning. There was only the sense of the other nearby.

  The air warmed suddenly. The orb sprang back to light.

  For a fleeting moment, he thought he saw someone standing next to him. Pain shot through his head, blinding him. When it cleared, whatever he’d seen was gone.

  Rsiran blinked tears from his eyes. He stood in the middle of the circle made by the pedestals, and blue light glowed brightly from them once again. He’d been holding one in his hand, but somehow it had returned to its pedestal and no longer pulsed with different light from the others. He had no way of telling which one he’d held.

  The orb had given him a strange vision, but nothing else had changed. He was still trapped in the room, separated from Jessa.

  Rsiran sank to the ground.

  There was nothing else to do but wait for the Elvraeth to find him.

  Chapter 38

  Rsiran sat on the stone, warmth radiating through him. The sense of lorcith surrounded him again, nearly oppressive. Within the ring of orbs, the light glowed so brightly, he couldn’t see anything else.

  As he sat, he steadied his breathing, focusing on the lorcith.