The Dark Ability: Books 1-4

by D. K. Holmberg

  “Know that it doesn’t,” she said.

  The man laughed softly. “You lost him? After all the time we spent searching for him, and now you’ve lost him?”

  She fixed the man with a hard-eyed expression. “He’s not nearly as easy to detect as some.”

  “I thought you said he was loud?”

  “At times. As are you.”

  “And what does it mean that he’s loud?”

  Sarah looked beyond the man and shook her head. “It means strength, Valn. This one… he is incredibly strong.”

  “Stronger than—”

  As he asked, Rsiran slipped on the branch.

  Sarah glanced at the trees and her eyes went wide.

  He didn’t dare wait any longer, and Slid.

  Rsiran emerged briefly, standing on the edge of the dock, before Sliding again, this time to the alley along where his father’s shop had been, and then once more, finally to his smithy. If Sarah was able to follow his Slides, he didn’t want to take the chance that she might be able to track him back to the smithy. Chances were that she already knew where to find him, but if she didn’t, then he wanted to be careful.

  And here he’d been concerned that his Sliding could be influenced. That wasn’t the only risk anymore, not if there was someone with the ability to track his Slides, as well as someone else who was able to Slide. They could possibly follow him anywhere.

  Wasn’t that the reason the Forgotten didn’t Slide often? They feared their Sliding might be influenced. And, it seemed, for good reason.

  A heavy pounding came on the door to his smithy.

  Rsiran jumped. He had six knives on him. Enough for the most part, but what if Sarah and this man Valn had followed him? He was protected by the heartstone alloy in the walls of the smithy, but he might not be protected if they simply tried to kick in the door.

  The smithy was supposed to be a place of safety, but what if it no longer was?

  Sliding—though this time, pulling himself rather than stepping into it—he emerged on the roof of his smithy. From here, he could see the street, though part of it remained obscured by the overhang of the roof. The air smelled of the filth from this part of Lower Town, in so many ways the stench worse here than in the rest of Lower Town, the benefit being it masked the smell of lorcith that might emanate from the smithy. Inside, that stink could be ignored, and the lorcith that he forged often overpowered it, anyway. He looked down, worried about what he might find.

  Haern stood outside the door to the smithy alone.

  Rsiran Slid to him, grabbed him by the sleeve, and then Slid back into the smithy, pulling through the bars of heartstone alloy.

  Haern jerked his arm away as they emerged inside. Rsiran twisted the knob on the lantern on his table, letting pale blue light spill across the smithy.

  “What the—” Haern started. “Rsiran, where were you?”

  He shook his head, touching his pocket to feel the small sheet of metal that he’d discovered in the hut, wondering why his father might have stuffed it into the wall.

  “When you didn’t come, I made my way deeper into the forest,” Rsiran said.

  “I told you to wait. That was part of the training.”

  Rsiran breathed out softly, trying to keep an image of Valn and Sarah fixed in his mind. He needed to know whether they were with the Forgotten or if they were with Venass. Until he knew, he wouldn’t be comfortable. Valn and his Sliding ability seemed more likely to make him one of the Forgotten, but the woman Sarah looked nothing like someone of Elaeavn. She was short, compact, and appeared deadly.

  “I went to the hut,” Rsiran said. “I hadn’t been there since…” He shook his head. Haern wouldn’t understand why he’d felt the need to return to the hut, and truthfully, Rsiran didn’t really know, either. He’d gone because he’d wanted to see the inside, because he’d been thinking about his father, and because he couldn’t shake the idea that there was something about Thom that he needed to know, only… what he had found had been different.

  “I know. Since Thom convinced you to go to Venass,” Haern said. “There’s nothing there. Brusus locked it after you left. Best we not use it, anyway, especially if Thom knows it exists.”

  Rsiran nodded. He should have been smarter than that and should have stayed away. “When I Slid out of the hut, I was attacked,” he went on. “At first, I thought it was you, that maybe you were playing some sort of training game with me, and when I couldn’t find you, I went to the trees. From there...”

  “What?” Haern asked.

  “There was activity near the hut. A Slider and a woman who I think can sense Sliding, much like Della. They were waiting for me.”

  “Are you sure they waited for you?”

  “They knew I could Slide, Haern. They were expecting it. The woman said she could sense it, and that my Sliding was loud.”

  Haern breathed out a soft swear. “Same thing Brusus used to say about your thoughts. He tell you that?”

  Rsiran had forgotten about Brusus telling him that, but then that had been before he started blocking his thoughts with lorcith and heartstone.

  “What did they want?” Haern asked.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t remain behind long enough to find out.”

  “You certain it was you they wanted, though?”

  Rsiran thought about what he’d overheard from them. “Yes.”

  Haern started pacing along the length of the smithy. One of his knives flipped into his hands, and he twisted it as he walked. “Could you tell where they might be from?”

  “That’s what I was trying to do,” he admitted, “but I… I slipped and she heard me. I had to Slide away before finding out who they might be with.”

  Haern paused and faced him. “Sliding likely means the Forgotten.”

  “It could mean Venass,” Rsiran said. “They were able to direct my Sliding when we were there.”

  “Damn,” Haern whispered. “And there’s nothing I can See, at least nothing bright enough, to know what they might be after. We haven’t heard much from either of them over the last few weeks, not since you escaped from the palace and Thom attacked. I kept thinking that they might come back to us, or that word of them might reach us, but there’s been nothing.”

  “Not even in the palace?” Rsiran asked.

  “Brusus’s contacts haven’t got much to share, and without anything to really bribe them with, we’re not likely to learn much, anyway.”

  Rsiran glanced at the table covered with his lorcith forgings. Brusus had used the forgings as a way to get information, but had stopped when Rsiran had asked him to.

  Hearn followed the direction of his gaze and shook his head. “Don’t matter that much anyway, Rsiran. There’s only so much you can learn from the palace. They’re not likely to share with Brusus anything about your break-in, and the Forgotten… well, that’s sort of an off-limits topic.”

  “I don’t want to be in the middle of all of this,” Rsiran said. “I don’t want to be the reason anyone gets hurt.”

  Haern grunted. “The way I see it, there’s not much that you’re going to be able to do to avoid it. Some things drag you in, regardless of whether you want them to or not.”

  “You’re the one who told me what’s coming,” Rsiran said.

  Haern nodded. “That I did. And that don’t change anything that is to come, now does it? You want to keep yourself safe, and you want to keep your friends safe, but what’s going on is bigger than all of us. And they don’t want no one interfering.”

  “So what can I do?” Rsiran asked.

  Haern lifted a knife off the table and flipped it toward him. Rsiran caught it easily from the air. “Seems to me that you’re already doing what you need. If you don’t want to get caught in the middle, you have to learn to master your abilities, whatever they are.” He tipped his head to Rsiran and touched a finger to his nose. “And there’s more to what you can do than what they know. I think that’s part of the reason you intrigue the
m so much.”

  “But, Haern, what can we really do if war comes like you say?”

  Haern laughed and started to the door. “Pick a side. That’s all any of us can do.”

  He pulled open the door and leaned out, pausing to turn to Rsiran. “We’ll pick up our training again tomorrow. Let this settle down a bit before we go at it. The forest?”

  Rsiran sighed, wishing what Haern suggested wasn’t necessary but knowing that he was likely right. “Not the edge of the forest,” he said.

  Haern frowned. “Where then?”

  “Deeper. Where Lianna was buried.” At least there he didn’t think they’d be discovered.

  Haern nodded once, then pulled the door closed as he disappeared down the street.

  Rsiran slipped the locks back into place around the door, knowing they did nothing to stop Jessa, but then he had no reason to obstruct her access. As he made his way to the forge, he wondered how he could do what Haern suggested. How could he pick a side if he didn’t know what each side wanted? And how could he choose when each side had done nothing but try to use him?

  Chapter 5

  The forge glowed a cool orange. Sweat dripped from his brow, and Rsiran set the hammer down atop the anvil. He went to the bucket of water where he’d left the knives he’d forged, and pulled them out. These were smaller than his usual knives, and laced with heartstone in a single strip that ran along the blade.

  “You finally done?” Jessa called from their bed.

  He took the knives and placed them on the table, arranging them in a line. It would take more effort to pull on them, but then he needed the practice. And this way, he had something that no one else could use. At least so far. If Venass and the Forgotten had their way, they would learn how to replicate his ability.

  “Done for now,” Rsiran said. He hadn’t noticed when Jessa had returned, but then he had been focused on the forge, and the metal, letting it clear his head as it so often did.

  Jessa stood and came to the table where she examined one of the knives he’d made, holding it up and turning it from side to side. “Interesting texture on this one. It’s almost as if you’ve put two knives together.”

  Rsiran could feel the way the metals sat on each other. Forging this had required folding the metals together rather than simply mixing the alloy, and he’d let the lorcith guide him with the forging. “Something like that,” he agreed.

  Jessa set the knife back down and took his hands. “Haern tells me that you’ve been practicing with him.”

  Rsiran grunted. “Not only him, it seems.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He shook his head and told her about the others he’d seen near the hut.

  “What do you think they were after?” she asked.

  “Besides me?”

  She punched him in the shoulder and leaned toward the pale red flower that she stuffed into her charm today. Standing this close to her, the bright fragrance coming off the flower drifted to him. It pushed back some of the bitterness in the air from the lorcith, as well as some of the strange sweetness that came from heartstone.

  “Yes, besides you. Do you really think that the forest is the best place for them to grab you? They were looking for something.”

  Rsiran hadn’t pieced that together, but maybe she was right. He reached for where he’d left his cloak draped over the table and pulled the small sheet of metal out and handed it to her.

  “What is this?”

  “What I found in the hut. This was buried in the wall, stuffed there, I think, by my father.”

  Jessa held it out and examined it much like she had with the knife. She turned her head slightly, as if trying to get a better view, and frowned. “There’s something here, isn’t there?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to look at it much.”

  She passed it back over to him. “This is skillfully made, but it’s different from your forgings.” She looked up from the metal. “You think your father did this?”

  Rsiran studied the piece of metal. It had been a while since he had seen anything made by his father, but the way the metal was folded together made it seem unlikely. The grindl mixed into the iron, but not in an alloy, and not like what was done with metals like steel. This was more like what he did with the heartstone, especially with the knives that he’d just made. There was a certain artistry to the metal, a pattern to the grindl within it, that didn’t really suit the utilitarian designs he’d seen his father favor.

  “I don’t know,” Rsiran said. “There was a reason he thought to hide it, though.”

  Jessa took it back from him and placed it near the blue heartstone light. The blue light could help augment what someone Sighted could see, while the orange light, like the lantern that had been in the Ilphaesn mine, made it more difficult for someone Sighted to see anything.

  “You think these patterns mean anything?” she asked.

  “Not that I can tell. I can barely see them.”

  “The way this green metal—”

  “Grindl,” Rsiran said.

  “—seems to repeat,” she went on. “Almost like there is an intentional pattern to it, but nothing that I can really make out or understand.”

  Rsiran could see the pattern, but if it were made with lorcith or with heartstone, he could feel the pattern. What he could see didn’t really give him much of an idea about whether the pattern itself meant anything, or whether there was something more to this metal than simply demonstrating technique. But the fact that it had been hidden within the wall of the hut made him think that there had to be something important about it.

  “So you think they were after this?” Jessa asked.

  “I don’t know that they knew it was there. I wouldn’t have known it was there if not for the darkness.”

  “Someone Sighted would have seen it,” Jessa said.

  Rsiran wondered if that was true. If they were Sighted, the shadows in the room might have obscured the ability to see the crack where this had been stuffed, especially with a fire burning in the hearth as there had been the times that Rsiran had visited.

  “How has your training gone?” Jessa asked.

  “Haern thinks we’ll need to choose sides,” Rsiran said.

  “Sides?”

  “With what’s coming. This… war,” he said. He ran his hand above the knives he’d just made, feeling the way that lorcith and heartstone called to him, each with a different type of intensity. It was different from the way the alloy pulled on him.

  “Which side, Rsiran?” Jessa asked. She pointed to the forge, and then to the lorcith items spread across the table. “Do you support the Elvraeth in the palace? Because that’s who controls the city. Or do you mean to support the Forgotten, those the Elvraeth have decided were too dangerous for the city? The same Forgotten we’ve seen willing to poison us to learn what you know. The same Forgotten willing to torment you—us—simply so that they could attain more power?” Jessa touched the nearest knife and sent it spinning in place. “What about Venass? The scholars didn’t seem too interested in your safety, either, did they? They were perfectly content to leave you trapped, and only after you managed to escape were they interested in helping. Even that came with a cost, now didn’t it?” Jessa turned to him and crossed her arms over her chest. “So which side, Rsiran? Tell me what you think we should do?”

  “I don’t know,” he said softly. Hearing her put it that way made it clear that there was no side that was the right one for them to choose. How could he work with any of them, especially if all of them seemed willing to harm whoever they had to in order to keep their control?

  “We need to keep safe and stay out of whatever they plan,” Jessa said. “That’s how we’ll get through this. Let the Forgotten do whatever they want to the Elvraeth, and let Venass continue to do… whatever it is they do. But we don’t need to get mixed up in it. That only leads one place.”

  Rsiran nodded. That Jessa was right didn’t mean that he knew how
they would remain safe, or that they would somehow manage to stay separated from what the Forgotten or Venass had in mind, especially if they had already come looking for him.

  “That’s my concern,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any way that we’re going to stay out of this. What if the way out is to stay in?”

  Jessa shook her head. “That means you intend to engage in whatever Venass and the Forgotten want. We already know the power the Elvraeth hide—and protect—in the palace. You’ve said it yourself that it needs to stay there, that the crystals are too powerful. What if Venass gets ahold of them? Or the Forgotten?” She grabbed the spinning knife and slapped her hand onto it. “How many of them do you think there are? How many compared to us? We’re nothing, Rsiran. That’s why they haven’t been opposed to using us for what they want. When they’re done using us, they won’t have any problem simply throwing us away again.”

  Even though he agreed with Jessa, Rsiran couldn’t shake the sense that Haern might be right. The Forgotten and Venass had proven that they would keep coming. They would be forced to make a choice at some point, but how could they? What they knew of the Forgotten was that they were willing to sacrifice anyone—and anything—to achieve whatever their goals might be. And Venass? He still didn’t know what they were after, only that they wanted to understand how he could Slide past the heartstone alloy. That, and they wanted the crystals in the palace. Thom coming after them made that clear.

  They needed to know more. In that, Jessa was wrong. If they waited, if they remained in the dark, they would always be forced to react. If they learned more, maybe they could stay in front of what came.

  But that meant putting themselves in even more danger.

  Rsiran watched Jessa. She touched her one hand to the charm hanging from the lorcith chain. Her eyes darted around the smithy, always searching. What might she see with her enhanced Sight that he could not? In the smithy, with the pressure of lorcith all around him, he doubted that she would see much more than he could sense. But elsewhere? It was why he was thankful for his enhanced Sight since holding the crystal.