The Dark Ability: Books 1-4

by D. K. Holmberg

  Rsiran turned. Haern wore a blank stare much like when he had one of his visions. “Haern?”

  Thom chuckled. “One down.”

  What had Brusus said about Thom? That he was a skilled Reader, one who could Compel even more strongly than Brusus.

  Rsiran made certain his mental barriers were in place, drawing on heartstone to fortify them.

  He grabbed onto Jessa. If he needed to Slide, he would at least make sure he got her to safety.

  Thom laughed again. “You’d leave him behind?”

  Rsiran didn’t think he’d Read him, but didn’t know for sure. Sometimes Della seemed to Read him even when he thought he’d fortified his defenses. “I’d get us to safety.”

  Thom smirked. “Thought I’d read you differently. I never expected you to be so callous.” He took a slight step forward, edging closer as he did.

  Rsiran pushed on one of his knives. “Don’t. Not any closer.”

  Thom paused. “Are you fast enough?”

  “With the knives?”

  Thom shook his head. “Sliding.”

  Thom lunged toward Jessa, slender knives appearing in his hands.

  Rsiran had been ready.

  He Slid faster than he ever had before, anchoring to a knife in Della’s home as firmly as he could.

  Everything blurred as he tore Jessa through the Slide. Air whistled past his face, colors surged. The air smelled of burning lorcith.

  He emerged long enough to drop her near the hearth. Della sat in her chair and looked up at him with a deep frown. Then he Slid back to the Barth.

  He had moved quickly enough that Thom still moved in his lunge.

  When Rsiran emerged, Thom spun, flinging one of the knives at him. Rsiran helplessly tried pushing on it, but it wasn’t lorcith made. He hadn’t expected it would be; Thom wouldn’t make that mistake.

  Rsiran Slid a step to the side, ducking away from the knife. It whistled past him and sank into the wall. Another knife followed and Rsiran Slid again, back a step.

  He ended near Haern who still stood staring blankly.

  Thom looked at him and as he did, Haern grabbed toward Rsiran’s arm, gripping tightly.

  “Haern!”

  It had no effect.

  Another pair of knives appeared in Thom’s hands, so smoothly that it reminded him of Haern. Rsiran hesitated. As he did, a knife nearly struck him.

  Then he anchored again and jerked Haern with him into a Slide.

  Pain shot through his arm as he Slid. He glanced down to see a knife protruding from his upper arm.

  Rsiran ignored it long enough to complete the Slide, emerging again in Della’s home.

  Haern let go of his arm and grabbed his neck with both hands, squeezing with a suffocating grip.

  Rsiran tried pulling away, but couldn’t. Between Haern’s grip and the pain in his arm, his vision faded. He thought he heard someone call his name, but he couldn’t be sure.

  Chapter 40

  Rsiran awoke to blurred vision and warmth. Pale blue light glowed somewhere nearby. For a moment, he thought he’d returned to the room with the orbs. Then his vision cleared. As it did, he felt the gentle pull of lorcith all around him.

  He sat up quickly and looked around.

  A lantern glowing with a deep blue light rested nearby. Unshaped lorcith filled a bin. His forgings practically spilled over the table along the far wall. His smithy.

  But how had he gotten here?

  “You’re awake.”

  Rsiran pushed up. Pain shot through his arm, and he remembered Thom’s knife hitting it as he Slid with Haern. He swallowed, feeling his throat burn as he did. An injury he hadn’t expected.

  He looked over to see Della sitting next to him, her legs tucked under her as she sat along side his thin bed. She sipped from a steaming mug. He smelled mint.

  “Who let you in here?”

  Della’s eyes sparkled a deeper green for a moment. “You nearly die, and your first question is about the safety of your smithy?”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded. “Perhaps that’s good.” She leaned toward him. Her silver hair twisted atop her head. A colorful scarf, slashes of blue and green and orange, twisted around her neck, the only colors she wore. Otherwise, a flowing tunic of white draped to her ankles. “I brought you here.”

  “With Jessa?”

  He looked around the smithy but didn’t see her. She was the only one with a key, though Brusus had already proven he could pick the lock. Except, when he’d left for the palace, Rsiran had barricaded the door, slipping the heartstone-forged blade in front of it to prevent anyone from sneaking in.

  His eyes flickered to the door, and he saw the barrier remained in place. “Not Jessa,” he said. Rsiran leaned back, shaking his head. His arm throbbed, and he wondered why Della hadn’t simply Healed him.

  “Not Jessa,” she agreed.

  Della laid a hand on his arm, and a sense of calming warmth worked through him. The pain persisted where he’d been struck, but he didn’t fear pain.

  “Did I Slide us here?”

  “In a way.”

  Rsiran grunted. “You guided me. Like the time before.”

  She nodded. “It seemed safest. I cannot Slide on my own, but my abilities allow me to guide you as you Slide.”

  He remembered the first time it had happened. He’d appeared at Della’s home unexpectedly. That was when he learned she could sense him Sliding. Not just sense it, but influence it. Another weakness of his abilities.

  “How?”

  She smiled gently. “I asked.”

  Something about the way she said it made him think of how he forged lorcith, the way he asked the lorcith to take a different shape than it wanted. It was how he’d made his knives, even before knowing what it was he did.

  “What of Haern?”

  Della’s face tensed for a moment. “Haern will be fine. Brusus helped clear the compulsion.”

  “And me?”

  “You will live. The blade was poisoned. Tchaln powder. Had we not already had the antidote…”

  Rsiran blinked. That meant she used the antidote he’d been given in Venass, the one meant for Brusus. “You couldn’t Heal me?”

  “It is a fast-acting poison. I stabilized you, but without that antidote, even my skills wouldn’t have been enough.” She frowned. “I haven’t seen tchaln powder used in many years. The making of it is mostly forgotten, a mixture of several different poisons, each with a distinct effect. Taken together…” She shook her head. “You are lucky.”

  Rsiran could think of a place where the making of such a poison hadn’t been forgotten. A place where Haern—once an assassin—had trained. “It was Thom. When we left the palace, I couldn’t Slide at first. Something blocked me. I anchored to the only thing I could sense and pulled us from the palace. We emerged in the Barth.”

  Della took a sip of her mint tea. When she set the mug down, she was frowning. “You did not have the same difficulty the last time you went to the palace?”

  Rsiran shook his head, understanding what she was getting at. “I sensed the sword and used it as the anchor. And when we left the palace the first time, I used what I sensed in your home.”

  “You were less skilled then.”

  She was right. Rsiran’s skill at Sliding had increased significantly since he first entered the palace. Now, even the heartstone alloy didn’t limit him. But something had.

  He thought of the way Thom had been waiting for them at the Barth. The idea that he’d been Compelled frightened him, but what else would explain it?

  “Could Thom have blocked me?”

  Della took a deep breath. Worry crinkled the corners of her eyes. “If he managed to Compel you to believe he was dead, it’s possible that he managed to do other things as well.” She hesitated. “I understand he pulled you there as a summons.” When Rsiran nodded, the worry in her eyes deepened. “And you refused?”

  “I’m not going back there,” he said. “The last
time… the last time, I was lucky to get free.”

  “Not luck, I think. But you made the right choice.”

  Rsiran sighed and rested his head back on the bed. “You know what happened in the palace?”

  “I know what Jessa told me.”

  He turned to look at her, wondering if she would be disappointed that he hadn’t returned with whatever it was the others sought. The source of power Della had told him about. He’d come away with nothing. It would have been better had he never gone. As it was, he’d risked Jessa and Haern for nothing. For him to be trapped in the orb room and to hold the orb and have a vision.

  She studied him, as if expecting him to say more.

  “I never planned to take anything from there,” he admitted.

  Della surprised him by laughing softly. “I know.”

  He struggled to sit up again. “You know? You didn’t try to stop me?”

  “Would it have mattered what I said? Had I told you that the crystals can’t be removed but that they are the reason that Venass and the Forgotten seek your abilities? What would you have done?” She paused, and her eyes seemed impossibly green, depths there that he didn’t fully grasp. “You needed to go, to understand. It is something that can only be experienced, not explained.”

  Rsiran blinked. Crystals. That was the same term Thom had used. “You knew I would go?”

  “I suspected.”

  “And you’ve seen them.”

  She nodded. “I’ve seen them. And like you, I suspect, have held one.”

  He pushed the barriers up in his mind, but suspected he was too late. It probably didn’t matter anyway. Della seemed to Read him regardless of what he did to protect himself from her. And if she could, did that mean Thom had Read him as well? Hadn’t Brusus commented on Thom’s skill?

  “I think you already know what I did.”

  She smiled and sipped her tea. “I didn’t Read you, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Rsiran frowned.

  Della set the mug down and fixed him with a direct gaze. “The great crystals are said to be items of power gifted to our people by the Great Watcher himself.”

  “What are they? What do they do?”

  “Power,” Della said. She took another long drink of her tea. “The Elvraeth call them crystals, but they are more than that.” She glanced toward his forge. “As each of the Elvraeth are born with varying degrees of all the abilities of the Great Watcher, these… crystals… concentrate that power.”

  “I don’t understand,” Rsiran said.

  Della smiled. “Few understand what they are. Even the council doesn’t fully know what they possess. They are power, but more than that. They are a way to speak to the Great Watcher. It’s why those who have held them call them sacred crystals.”

  Rsiran didn’t know what to say. A way to speak to the Great Watcher. If true, he understood why the Forgotten and Venass would seek them. “And they think to reach them now—”

  “Because of you.” She set her mug down and met his eyes. “I am surprised you were able to reach the crystals,” she said, her eyes flashing even darker before brightening again. Rsiran caught a hint of—surprise? Fear?—in her tone. “And with that kind of power… the crystals change you. Speaking to the Great Watcher changes you.”

  “But I didn’t speak to the Great Watcher.”

  “Are you so certain? Do you think the Great Watcher would use words like you and I?”

  Rsiran thought about his visions, the steady glow of the white lights in the distance that switched to the deep blue glow. And then the immense presence. Had he witnessed the Great Watcher?

  “I see you aren’t certain. That’s good.”

  Rsiran sighed. He needed to share what he saw with someone, and Della would be the most likely to help him understand what he’d experienced. “When I held the orb—the crystal, I had a vision. White light, massive amounts, that spread below me. With the light, I could almost make out cities, as if the light represented people.” Or something else. At the time, he’d wondered if the light represented lorcith. But that meant the dark blue light represented something else. Heartstone. And Rsiran didn’t think there was any source remaining. “Then it was gone. I was left in darkness. Nothing but night surrounding me.”

  Della listened intently, nodding as he spoke. When he finished, she looked over at him. “When I reached the Heart, I saw the crystals likely the same as you.” Her eyes went distant, reminding him of what happened to Haern when he had a vision. “This was many years ago. Much has changed since then, but I doubt the crystals are any different. There was one, different from the others, and it pulsed slowly, pulling me to it. It wasn’t until I held it in my hands that the pulsing stopped.”

  Rsiran shivered. What she described mirrored his experience.

  “And then… then I saw a vast expanse below me, as if I sat within the stars. I saw no glowing lights, nothing but darkness. As I sat there, I felt connections… I had no other word for it and still don’t… form between me and distant places. Like you, I felt the presence. I did not see anything. When it was done, the crystal had returned to its place among the others. I remember standing among the crystals, uncertain which of them I held.”

  She fell silent and took another sip of her tea.

  Rsiran thought about the similarities of their experiences. “Why do you think you spoke to the Great Watcher?”

  Della smiled. “I don’t think I spoke to him. I do not doubt that he spoke to me.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “Those connections I felt, I feel them still. Every day, I am aware of the connections I first felt when I held the crystal.”

  “What are they?”

  “They are people I’m meant to help. That was what I was shown. And given the ability to do so.”

  The words took a moment to settle into him. “Given the ability? You’re saying your abilities changed after you held the crystal?”

  Della nodded. “There is much about me I do not share, Rsiran, but I didn’t always have the abilities I have now. Without that experience, without holding the crystal and feeling those connections form, I would never have gained them.” She smiled at him. “I would never have been able to Heal you when Brusus first brought you to me. I would never have been able to Heal you when you Slid to me on your own.”

  “The Great Watcher added to your abilities?”

  She shrugged. “Or simply allowed me to access what I already possessed.”

  “You think the same will happen to me?”

  “I don’t know the will of the Great Watcher, Rsiran. Few can claim they do. But I know what I experienced. It is the reason the crystals are so well protected and why Venass cannot be allowed to possess them.”

  “Just Venass?”

  “I don’t think the Forgotten would do anything more than what you were able to do. Even were they able to reach the crystals in the first place—which isn’t possible for most—they would find that, like you, they wouldn’t be able to remove them. The crystals are well protected.”

  “But Venass?”

  Della’s eyes narrowed. “Venass studies many things, twisting what the Great Watcher has made. The crystals… they are the purest form. I fear what would happen were they to possess even one of the great crystals. How they would twist what was meant to remain pure. And I fear that whatever Venass sent in those crates, whatever device they thought to bring into the palace, would give them the ability to reach them.”

  Had this been about Venass the entire time? If Venass managed to bring him toward Thyr, using Brusus’s poisoning to convince him that he needed to Slide north, what else had they been involved in? Had they convinced the Forgotten that they needed to obtain the crystals?

  Rsiran shivered again. Venass intended to use him too.

  “You see the difficulty.”

  Rsiran nodded. “I’m not sure I can do anything against them. If they managed to Compel me…”

  Della smiled. “T
hat, I think, is why the Great Watcher chose you. Your specific combination of gifts protects you from them.”

  “But it doesn’t. They drew me north. I was trapped within Venass—”

  “Were you? Didn’t you tell me you managed to Slide out of the cell they placed you in?”

  He nodded slowly. “They let me go. Released me.”

  “They tried to bind you to them. They wanted to convince you that you needed to return.” Della’s eyes hardened. “I think the scholars knew they could not truly trap you. That’s the reason they thought to convince you otherwise.”

  “If Thom Compelled me once, making me believe him dead, what keeps him from doing it again? What protects me from that?”

  She sighed. “I don’t think he Compelled you. Perhaps Pushed. I am not certain one such as you can be Compelled.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Only that nothing protects you other than the defenses only you know how to build. For you to be safe—for us all to be safe—you must learn to shield yourself at all times. But doing so is difficult and will make Sliding more challenging.”

  “You think I need to stop Venass from reaching the crystals?”

  “Once I would not have thought it necessary. But now… now I think you’re the only one who has a chance.”

  Rsiran thought about how hard it had been for him to even reach the crystal room. But if the scholars Pushed him, even if they didn’t Compel him, he doubted he would be able to prevent them from using him to find it.

  “What do I need to do?”

  Della shook her head. What she said next struck fear through his heart. “I don’t know.”

  Epilogue

  Rsiran sat on the anvil, staring at the door to his smithy. The sword that he’d used to block the doorway now rested against the wall. He hadn’t bothered to slip the lock. Since Della had left, he’d stared at the door, waiting for Jessa to return. What did it meant that she hadn’t?

  He didn’t know what he needed to do, but felt that everything he thought he understood was wrong. The Elvraeth protected the crystals. After holding one—and now hearing Della’s experience—he had to agree they should be kept safe. Who better than the Elvraeth, gifted by the Great Watcher with all the abilities?