The Dark Ability: Books 1-4

by D. K. Holmberg

  Every so often, Jessa would sniff at the flower. He had yet to learn why she chose to place a flower in the charm. Maybe only because she wanted something other than the stink of Lower Town, or maybe there was more to it.

  Before, he had thought to barricade himself in the smithy. That was the reason for the bars of heartstone alloy running along the smithy. It had taken Jessa and his friends to convince him to give up on that notion, that he couldn’t remain hidden, because others would come for him, regardless. And now that he knew more about everything was that took place around them—how much greater it was than he imagined—he knew he couldn’t keep them safe within the smithy, even if he wanted to.

  But remaining ignorant of what awaited them wasn’t helping them, either. Waiting did nothing but put them in more danger, and let others prepare.

  What he needed was to understand what was at stake. It might be about the crystals at the heart of the palace, but there might be more as well. And what would happen when the attack came to Elaeavn? Would they be ready?

  Rsiran found Jessa watching him. “I see what you’re thinking.”

  He shook his head. “I’m only thinking that we need to know what they’re after.”

  “We tried that once.”

  He nodded. The image of Shael lying dead because of his knife remained burned in his mind. Haern claimed that he had only done what was needed, but what if the Great Watcher intended for him to embrace the darkness and to use his ability in this way?

  Rsiran couldn’t do that to Jessa. He would not do that to her.

  Then he needed a different plan. Only… he didn’t know what that would be.

  Chapter 6

  “You have to find a way to move and attack at the same time.”

  Rsiran wiped the sweat dripping from his forehead and glanced up at Haern. Somehow, the older man seemed barely bothered by the sparring, his breathing easy, and no sign of sweat. He scarcely seemed to have exerted himself.

  How could Rsiran be so exhausted? He spent hours hammering away at the forge without any need to slow, but practicing with the sword… that had been a different sort of exertion.

  The heartstone blade touched the floor, the tip resting against the wood. Rsiran was surprised to note that where it touched, it left small charred traces behind.

  He sighed. “Why do I need to learn to fight like this?” he asked Haern, motioning with the sword. The question was not a new one, and he expected the answer.

  “What happens if there are no lorcith knives for you to push or pull? What happens if you can’t Slide somewhere? Do you want to feel helpless like that?”

  Rsiran shook his head. That was the last thing that he wanted. “But you’re letting me use this,” he said, holding up the heartstone-forged sword. “If I have this—”

  “Haven’t I shown you how that can be stopped?”

  Rsiran nodded. The first time he’d tried pushing the sword at Haern, he had simply ducked and grabbed the sword out of the air. Rsiran pulled on it, but Haern had managed to resist, holding tightly to the sword. Rsiran still didn’t know how Haern had managed that.

  “You’re using that sword because you need to learn how to attack creatively. With your abilities, you should be able to attack in ways that I can’t, but you still haven’t managed to even disarm me, let alone defeat me.”

  And Rsiran felt a growing frustration about that as well. Each time he tried—and failed—Haern smacked him with the flat of his sword. His arms and legs stung from each one, a painful reminder of all the times he had failed.

  “I can Slide away if I am attacked, Haern.”

  “Yes. That worked so well for you with Shael. And the Forgotten.”

  “Shael had the Elvraeth chains.”

  Haern nodded. “You make my point.”

  “That’s just it, Haern. Had I not been trapped by the chains, I’m not sure that I would have learned about how I could connect to the heartstone.”

  Haern’s eyes narrowed. “You think that it was a good thing that Shael attacked you? That he trapped you on Firell’s ship?”

  “Not a good thing, no,” Rsiran started. The time he’d spent trapped on Firell’s ship had been torment, but mostly because he didn’t know what had happened to Jessa, where Josun had dragged her. He would have done anything to find out. “But good came from it.”

  “And Venass?” Haern asked. “You were trapped there, I seem to remember you sharing. Do you think that some good came from your time there?”

  Rsiran didn’t think that anything good could come from a place like Venass. After they had trapped him, essentially buried him in lorcith until he managed to find a way free, the only thing that he had gotten from Venass had been an antidote that hadn’t even been needed for Brusus. But hadn’t he come to understand that they were a threat?

  Haern shook his head and grunted. “Always so damn positive. If you think that there were lessons you were meant to take from that place, then you are a fool,” he said. “From that line of thinking, then you’ll probably think there was a good reason you ended up trapped by the Forgotten.”

  Of all the times he’d been trapped, for some reason, it was that time that had left him feeling the most helpless. He couldn’t stop what they did to him, how they assaulted him. Not the physical attacks so much, but the way they had attacked his mind, attempting to steal knowledge from him, secrets that were his alone.

  Because of that, he hated the Forgotten the most. That, and the fact that they had not only poisoned him, but Jessa as well. They had forced Firell to help find him, tormenting him by threatening harm to his daughter.

  “Not good. But at least I know how far they’ll go to get what they want.”

  Haern grunted again. “You could have learned that without getting abducted. Think about how long they have been in hiding, with no sign that they were organized as they are. Even Brusus hadn’t learned about the extent of their organization.”

  “Or you,” Rsiran said.

  Haern often downplayed his connections, but he had been an assassin before coming to Elaeavn. Those skills would have given him a different sort of insight than someone like Brusus who had been born and raised in Elaeavn, even if his mother had been exiled.

  “Yes. Or me,” Haern said.

  “You’ve never told me much about your time before Elaeavn, other than the fact that you were an assassin,” Rsiran said.

  Haern’s face remained neutral, but there was a certain tension to his shoulders. His hand clenched around the hilt of the steel sword—one of Rsiran’s that Haern had asked him to make—and he took a slow breath. “There aren’t many who know of that time.”

  “Jessa knows.”

  “Jessa knows some.”

  “How did you end up in Venass?”

  Haern’s eyes seemed to take in everything in the smithy, before pausing on Rsiran. “You don’t end up in Venass. They claim you if they think there’s something you can do for them. Like your abilities.”

  “They wanted what you can See?”

  Haern traced a finger along the scar on his face. “Seers have different levels of ability, you know that, Rsiran?”

  He didn’t, so he shook his head.

  “Don’t really know how it works, but it’s like each person catches a different glimpse of what the Great Watcher knows. You take all of that, and you piece it together…”

  Rsiran thought he understood. Venass could use the combined knowledge gained from Seers in some way. “When did you remove it?”

  Haern tapped the scar. “You can never really get away if you continue to use what they give you. That’s something I learned early on. But it’s been hard. A man gets used to having certain gifts. Thing like enhancement to Seeing, that was useful in my line of work. Can’t say I don’t miss it.”

  Rsiran realized that was part of the reason Haern pushed him as he did. He wanted Rsiran to be better prepared for whatever he might face, including the possibility that his abilities would fail. “You’
re still gifted.”

  His eyes went distant. “That’s the thing. I was never a strong Seer before I went to Venass, so when I took away what they gave me, the implant, I expected it to fade. Only… only I retained more than I expected. Sort of like I gained strength through use.”

  “Is the scar from when they implanted you with lorcith?” He didn’t know if it had been lorcith or heartstone, but Venass seemed more likely to use lorcith.

  “From when it came out. Jessa’s father… He helped.”

  Haern fell silent and Rsiran decided not to push on that issue any further. “That’s why you helped her? She told me that you rescued her.”

  Haern’s face darkened. “That would be as good a way to put it as any,” he answered.

  “Where was she? I mean, she told me that slavers thought to sell her, but not where.”

  Haern shook a moment. “What would you do, Rsiran? You think you would go to Eban, find the slaver responsible for what happened to her, and get revenge for what they did?”

  What they did? Jessa hadn’t said anything about what they had done to her. “I didn’t mean—”

  “It doesn’t matter, anyway.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I already took care of them,” Haern said.

  He said it with such force, and an edge of darkness, that Rsiran took an involuntary step back.

  “Elaeavn is protected,” Haern went on. “And that isn’t necessarily something that should change. Most who live here do not know about the darkness that exists outside the city, and never learn how hard a place it can be. You’ve seen some of it—more than most who have lived here their entire lives—but you’ve been protected as well.”

  “I’ve seen what Venass did. I’ve seen what the Forgotten—”

  Haern laughed. “The Forgotten. They only matter to the Elvraeth, and to Elaeavn. But what of other places? In Elaeavn, we think the Great Watcher has granted us abilities, and that makes us special, but there are other places and other abilities. The only thing special about Elaeavn is that we know so little about the rest of the world.”

  Haern raised his sword and held it out. “Now. We need to continue to practice. If you lose your connection to lorcith, you might need to know simple technique. I don’t think to make you into a Neelish swordsman, but you can learn enough to get past someone who knows less than you. That might make the difference between getting caught and getting to safety.”

  “Haern—” Rsiran started.

  Haern shook his head, cutting off additional questions. Then he leapt forward, swinging his sword in attack.

  Chapter 7

  The bandolist playing in the back of the Wretched Barth was a man Rsiran had seen before, and the mournful tune he played was familiar. There was a certain soothing quality to the fact that he could sit at a table in the Barth again, and hold a mug of ale. Perhaps in that, Brusus had been right to buy the tavern.

  Jessa sat across from him, absently rolling dice in her hand, shaking them before letting them spill out across the table. Her ale sat untouched. Since returning to the smithy to see him practicing with Haern, she had been quiet, though Rsiran hadn’t learned why. She had whispered something to Haern before he left, making him promise to meet them at the Barth later. And now they were here.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “When Brusus gets here,” she said.

  Rsiran took a long drink and set his mug back on the table. His eyes darted around the Barth. There were others here tonight, the first time that he’d seen that since it had reopened. A couple sat along one wall, eating a plate of beef and bread, speaking quietly. Rsiran couldn’t help but check for weapons, or anything that might put them in danger. Four men sat around a table near the bandolist. They diced and talked too loudly to be much of a threat. He saw nothing about them that made him uncomfortable. Unfortunately, he’d learned such an observation didn’t mean they were harmless. He’d thought there was nothing to worry about from the waitress when Brusus had been poisoned, and he’d nearly lost a friend that night.

  No other patrons sat in the Barth, though Rsiran figured that was probably for the best. Too many people would make him suspicious about why they had suddenly chosen the Barth. Even under Lianna’s management, the Barth had never been all that busy. She had been busy enough, and her cooking had brought in more people than had come under Karin’s management, but that had been part of the Barth’s charm.

  “When will he get here?” Rsiran asked. He shifted on his stool, trying to find a comfortable way to sit, but his body ached from working with Haern all afternoon. As fit as he felt, given his working the forge, it seemed his training introduced him to muscles he didn’t even know he had. Somehow, even his buttocks throbbed.

  “Don’t know.”

  “Jessa?” he asked. There was tension in her voice. Had he not known her nearly as well as he did, he might not have heard it, but he was around Jessa pretty much every day, and he knew her as well as he could know anyone. He leaned toward her and rested his arms on the table, reaching for her hands.

  She swallowed as he touched her. “Not yet.” She pulled one hand away and touched the charm she wore, now with a bold yellow flower inside. The large petals fell from the charm, making them look as if they had been formed together. Rsiran wondered how she managed to stuff the flowers inside.

  “What are you keeping from me?” he asked.

  She looked over, and her eyes were drawn, but she only shook her head.

  Rsiran waited. If Jessa didn’t want to answer, then he wasn’t going to push, but whatever she wasn’t saying troubled her. He continued to drink his ale, while she occasionally picked up the dice and tossed them across the table. She never bothered to look at how they landed.

  Rsiran didn’t know how much time passed before the door to the Barth opened. They both glanced to look. Haern came in and wiped a trail of rain off his cloak, sending splatters of water to the ground. It hadn’t been raining when they arrived at the Barth.

  “Is he with you?” Jessa asked.

  “Coming,” Haern answered. He took a seat next to Rsiran. An amused smile came to his lips as he saw the way that Rsiran shifted on his stool. “You look like you’re sore.”

  Rsiran rubbed his thighs and shook his head. “How is it that I hurt like I do?”

  “You need practice. Muscles take a while to get accustomed to different movements. Maybe you’re not as strong as you think.”

  The comment brought a smile from Jessa that faded quickly. “He’s strong enough.”

  “Better hope so,” Haern said.

  Jessa shook her head.

  Rsiran looked from Haern to Jessa. Neither was willing to meet his eyes. “What does that mean?”

  “Wait for—”

  “Yeah, Brusus,” he said. He reached for Jessa before pulling his hand back. What wouldn’t she tell him? Why keep something from him? Didn’t they share in the risk together? What didn’t she want to say to him?

  He began to feel a growing irritation the longer he sat there. Had she learned something about the pair he’d seen in the forest? If so, why not tell him?

  He drank his ale, finishing the mug in a long draught, and nodded when one of the servers came by to check if he wanted another. Jessa only watched him.

  Rsiran lost track of the time before Brusus finally arrived. He swept into the Barth, his eyes surveying the tavern, flaring slightly darker green as he did, before he pulled off his cloak and hung it on a hook near the door. When he took a seat across from Haern, he pulled a stack of coin from his pocket and set it next to the dice.

  When no one reached for it, he shrugged. “Thought we’d dice, but you all seem a bit somber tonight. Maybe it’s the music?” he asked, turning toward the bandolist. He motioned to the man, and the song changed, getting a little louder, and bawdier. The song picked up in rhythm, and the singer’s voice rang loudly through the tavern.

  Brusus leaned forward, the amusement in
his face gone. “Rsiran,” he started.

  Rsiran took a long drink of his ale and slammed it down with more force than he intended. “I’ve been waiting for you. Jessa won’t tell me what’s bothering her, and Haern remains silent. Seems like you still want to hold us all under your control.” The words spilled out, more influenced by drink than anything. Rsiran flushed and sighed. “I’m sorry, Brusus. I don’t mean—”

  Brusus shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Jessa didn’t want to say anything to you until I got here because I suspect she wanted to wait to know if I learned anything different than she had.” Brusus glanced at Jessa, who nodded.

  “Learned anything about what? Why wouldn’t she tell me what she’d learned?”

  “Because she’s afraid of what you might do, I suspect,” Brusus said.

  “Do?”

  Brusus looked over at Jessa and leaned forward, lowering his voice. “Even after everything you’ve been through, you’ve proven to be far more forgiving than most,” Brusus went on. “Most of us don’t really understand, and that’s why Haern has been working with you, wanting to harden you a bit.”

  Rsiran looked around the table. Everyone here was his friend, but they all watched him as if afraid of how he might react.

  What did they know?

  “Forgiving of what?” he asked. He looked to Jessa, but she wasn’t willing to meet his eyes. Instead, she picked the dice off the table and shook them again, rolling them in her hand. “You mean my father, don’t you?” he asked.

  That had been the point of contention between him and Jessa. She never understood why he had been so willing to forgive his father, even if Rsiran didn’t really consider it forgiving. He couldn’t find it in himself to hate his father, even after everything that he’d done.

  Jessa looked up and met his eyes. She shook her head and set the dice down, not rolling them across the table this time. “Not your father.”

  “Then who?” he asked.

  Brusus answered for her. “It’s your sister, Rsiran.”

  “What about my sister?” The last time he’d seen Alyse, she had been making her way through Lower Town. Alyse had always been the most blessed of them, gifted by the Great Watcher with both Sight and Reading. Dual abilities were uncommon outside of the Elvraeth, enough to ensure that Alyse would marry well.