The Dark Ability: Books 1-4

by D. K. Holmberg

  Jessa stopped moving. He shouldn’t have allowed her to go without him. What had he been thinking? She was a skilled sneak—at least Brusus and Haern certainly felt that she was—but if Sarah and Valn had returned, and had found him… then Jessa would be in real danger. He could hold onto her, connected with the lorcith, but what if they Slid her someplace so quickly that he lost his connection to the charm or the necklace?

  Now that she had gone, there was nothing to do but wait, only Rsiran didn’t care for waiting. It left him feeling helpless, a sensation that he’d gotten far too familiar with over the last few months.

  Then the first sense of lorcith that he’d detected disappeared.

  Rsiran held his breath, checking to make certain that Jessa hadn’t disappeared, but she was still there.

  Slowly, the sense of her made its way back toward him. When she was barely two-dozen steps from him, he sensed the return of lorcith, this time much closer.

  Rsiran didn’t dare wait.

  He Slid to Jessa, grabbed her, and Slid away.

  The Slide pulled him quickly, the flash of colors and the hot, bitter scent of lorcith streaking past, almost the same as if he stood in front of the forge, and then they emerged. Rsiran’s Slide had brought them to Ilphaesn, but the part of the mountain that had once been hidden from him. This was where he thought Josun had been mining, though he still didn’t know what Josun had hoped to gain by providing lorcith to the Forgotten.

  As he emerged, he listened to the sounds of the mountain around him, the call of lorcith. Something about it had changed, but he wasn’t completely certain. Had he more time—and more willingness to search without Jessa—he thought he might be able to figure out what seemed different.

  Jessa released his arm. “What was that? They had disappeared. And why did you bring me here?”

  Rsiran hated that he had to bring her to this place, but this was the first place that came to mind when he thought of finding a safe place to Slide. He could have Slid them to the smithy, but he didn’t want to risk them following them there, and at least here, they might follow, but there would be no way that they could Slide past the alloy that Josun had placed in the mouth of the cavern.

  “They hadn’t disappeared,” he said. “Not entirely. When you made your way back down the street, they had reappeared.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He pulled on the lorcith charm. “I could sense it when they left, and then when they returned. They must have known to follow you.” He looked at the walls of the mine. The walls seemed to have something like a faint glow to them. Rsiran suspected it was his newly enhanced Sight that allowed him to see the change, but he still didn’t have nearly the skill Jessa did.

  “Damn,” Jessa whispered.

  “Did you learn who they were?”

  She shook her head. “Not well enough to know who might have chased you to Elaeavn.”

  “Not just me,” he reminded.

  “You don’t know that they were the same ones that took Alyse. For all that we know, they’re separate issues.”

  The likelihood that there would be two different attacks at the same time seemed unlikely, but then again, the idea that there were multiple groups trying to gain access to the Elvraeth and what they stored in the palace would once have seemed equally unlikely. Even the idea of one other group trying to reach the palace would have surprised him, but that had been before he knew what he did now. In that way, he had been protected living in Elaeavn.

  “If they’re separate, then I still need to find out what happened to Alyse,” he said.

  “Only Alyse and not these other two?”

  They had to be connected, why else would Sarah and Valn appear in the city at the same time Alyse went missing?

  And he needed to know if they were the Forgotten or Venass. Though both wanted to use him, knowing changed how he approached them.

  He sighed, took another look at the mine, feeling the pull of the lorcith, before grabbing Jessa’s hand. “Are you ready?”

  “Where now?”

  “The smithy. I think that it’ll probably be safe to return from here to there. The alloy should shield us.”

  He hoped that it would, but what if it didn’t? What if he couldn’t be safe anymore? What if even Sliding had been taken from him as a way to keep Jessa and his friends safe?

  Chapter 9

  “Tell me again why you want to walk?” Brusus asked.

  Rsiran shook his head at his friend as they made their way along the street. It was true that Rsiran rarely walked anywhere. Why walk when Sliding took him all that much faster? More than that, he had the need to practice, to improve his Sliding. Or, he had, until he began to fear the safety of Sliding.

  “I told you what I saw.”

  “You don’t know that they can track you. Didn’t Della tell you that ability was rare?”

  “I don’t know much about that ability,” Rsiran said. “Only what I had heard. Why risk it?”

  Brusus sniffed. “Because you have me walking through here,” he said, pointing at the alleyway in disgust. “This place… If we could have found you a smithy anywhere else, I think we would should have.”

  Rsiran glanced back down the street, toward the old smithy he’d taken over and made his own. He had to admit that it felt good in some ways to actually walk. “This location has its advantages. I mean, who in this neighborhood would bother reporting the noise to the constables? And why would the constables bother to believe them even if they did? Besides, this keeps me out of the eye of the Smith Guild.” He wondered if the guild even knew of his smithy. They had to have kept records of all the smiths in the city. Would they continue to track the ones that had supposedly shut down?

  “That was part of the appeal at first.”

  “Where else would we find a smithy like this?” Rsiran asked with a laugh.

  “No place safe,” Brusus answered. They turned onto a wider street and started down toward the docks. “You sure this is what you want to do?” he asked.

  Rsiran had thought about it for the last few days. “I think this is what I need to do.”

  “And Jessa?”

  “She isn’t convinced.”

  Brusus watched him a moment, his face pulling into a broad smile. “Not convinced? You didn’t tell her, did you?”

  Rsiran didn’t answer right away. What was there to say? That he hadn’t told Jessa he intended to come down to this part of Lower Town, or that he wanted to know what might have happened to Alyse, or even that he intended to find his mother to see if she knew anything about what happened?

  He’d tried using the lorcith Alyse wore, the chain that their father had forged for her, to find her, but had so far discovered nothing. Until he knew about Alyse, he wouldn’t be settled. Only after he understood could he begin to move onto the next step that needed to happen, whatever that might be.

  Only, he began to suspect that the next step involved finding out more about who targeted him in the city, and then he would need to find a way to deter them, however he could. A part of him feared what that might require. If he wanted his friends to be left alone, if they were to be allowed peace, then it might take a more aggressive stance than he’d taken so far. Jessa didn’t understand that, but he’d seen the lengths that the Forgotten would go; he’d seen the way that Venass had sought to use him. He began to think he needed to do more than deter them; he needed to frighten them. Maybe that started with Sarah and Valn.

  “Jessa doesn’t agree with what I think needs to happen,” Rsiran said.

  Brusus tipped his head to the side and studied Rsiran for a moment. “You need to be careful, son. She’s the type that doesn’t react well to being excluded. And I’ve seen the two of you together. You have abilities. Damn, but the Great Watcher knows that you do. There are things that you can do that I can’t even begin to fully understand. But that doesn’t mean that you can close out those who care about you, especially when they share your bed.”

  He
smiled and patted Rsiran on the arm then led them down a narrow street. They wound into a part of Elaeavn that Rsiran wasn’t familiar with. That was one downside to his ability to Slide everywhere. He never learned the streets, not like Jessa or Brusus did. If he needed to travel somewhere, he could simply take himself there, missing all the parts of the city along the way. It shielded him in some ways.

  The muted sounds of the waves crashing along the shore carried to him, and the smell of salt cut through the other stink of filth along the street. They encountered no one else. Rsiran wondered if that was because of the time of day, or whether that was due to something else. The two of them might not look terribly imposing, but Brusus walked with purpose. In this part of the city, anyone moving as quickly as he did likely had something unsavory in mind.

  “Are you sure this is the right area?” Rsiran asked.

  Brusus glanced over and watched him a moment before laughing. “Right area? You know this is no different from the area you call home? In many ways, this is cleaner.”

  They hadn’t passed any of the stagnant pools of water like were found near the smithy, which kept the stench minimized. All parts of the city were designed to drain back out into Aylianne Bay, but over time, many parts of Lower Town had become obstructed, the drains failing. When they failed in Upper Town, the Elvraeth made certain to send the city engineers to repair the problem. Down here, there was not the same urgency when the drains failed.

  The bright sunlight didn’t manage to pierce the space between buildings as it did higher in the city. That was by intentional design. When the city had first been built, the Lower Town buildings were the first placed, and they were set in ways that obscured the city from the water, attempting to blend into the rock. Rsiran had seen the city from above, and from a distance, and there were times when the illusion was better than others.

  A door opened, and a young faced peeked out, before closing quickly.

  Rsiran glanced at Brusus, and he shrugged. “You’re scary,” Brusus said.

  Rsiran smiled. Were that only true. Then he might be left alone. Then all of them might be left alone. It raised a question for him: how could he be truly frightening to those chasing him? What could he do that would make them hesitate before coming after them?

  Not his abilities. There didn’t seem to be anything about his abilities that scared them. Rather, his ability to Slide past heartstone and lorcith made him alluring. That was the reason they wanted him.

  It would have to be something big enough—or he would have to become someone frightening enough—to keep the Forgotten and Venass from coming after him. Maybe the secret involved his training with Haern.

  There was another option, one that he hadn’t put as much thought into, but as he watched Brusus, he recognized the threat the Elvraeth posed. If they could somehow convince the Elvraeth to recognize the risk from the Forgotten, or from Venass, they wouldn’t be in as much danger.

  Brusus stopped in front of a worn brick building. Like the rest around here, it flowed from one to the next, no real separation. Walls were shared between buildings here, and in some places the brick cracked and fell. He tapped on a rough wooden door with gaps around the frame, stepping back after he did.

  “Be ready,” Brusus warned.

  Rsiran focused on the knives in his pockets. At least that ability still didn’t seem limited. If it ever were limited, he would truly feel isolated.

  The knives tilted forward, ready for him to push them through the fabric of his cloak.

  The door opened a crack, and an older woman peered out. Her eyes were a darker green than most in this part of Lower Town, and her mouth wrinkled as she pressed her lips together. A faded gray scarf covered her head.

  In spite of that, Rsiran recognized his mother.

  “What do you want?” she snapped.

  “Miss,” Brusus began, stepping forward. “We have a few questions for you is all.”

  She glanced from Brusus to Rsiran, and he realized that she didn’t recognize him. In the time since he’d left home, his physical appearance had changed. Primarily due to the manual labor he’d done in the mines, and more recently, his work at the forge, giving him strength that he hadn’t had before, but he had also experienced much. No longer was he the same sheltered boy he’d once been, a boy who looked up at the Elvraeth palace and wondered why they were given the right and the ability to rule when he was given so little. Now he understood that they had taken that right, much like others wanted to take it from them.

  “Questions?” she echoed. “What kind of questions do you have? Are you with the constables?” She eyed Brusus’s fine jacket with the embroidery that ran along the sleeves with a splash of color not common in Lower Town, and then she looked to Rsiran, her eyes seeming to take in his cloak, the fabric much finer than would be found here. “Not constables,” she said. Her eyes widened and she took a step back. “The palace?” she asked with a gasp.

  Brusus frowned and glanced at Rsiran. “Not the palace. Please, we have a few questions is all.”

  She recovered quickly. “Then if not the palace and if not the constables, I have nothing to say.” She slammed the door shut on them, and a heavy lock slipped closed.

  “Well, that was interesting,” Brusus said.

  “She didn’t recognize me.”

  Brusus clapped him on the shoulder. “Rsiran, if I hadn’t been with you for the last few months, I’m not sure that I would recognize you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Only that you’ve changed. Not just your appearance, though that has changed too. But the way that you carry yourself. You were plenty timid when we first met, afraid to upset your father and risk your ’ship. I think that’s changed the most.” A playful smile worked across his face. “Well, that and the fact that you’ve got yourself a woman. That changes a man plenty too.”

  Brusus pulled out his lock-pick set and unrolled it. He poked at the lock until it clicked and pushed on the door. It didn’t budge.

  “Didn’t expect that down here,” he muttered.

  “What?”

  “Feels like they placed bars into the ground. Not many with the know how or the skills to fashion something like that.”

  “My father would have,” Rsiran said.

  Brusus nodded. “Should’ve thought of that.” He stepped back, rolling the lock-pick set back and slipping it back into his pocket. He crossed his arms over his chest as he surveyed the street. “Need to find another way in, but one that doesn’t make too much noise. Constables don’t patrol in this part too often, but they do send men from time to time.”

  “Let me Slide us through,” Rsiran said.

  “Thought you didn’t want to do that. What if it draws those from the other night in the forest?”

  Rsiran considered the door. He needed to learn what happened to Alyse. To do that, he might have to take a few risks. He could minimize them, and maybe a short Slide like this wouldn’t be enough to trigger any sort of attention.

  “It might,” he said.

  “Then we’ll have to be ready.” Brusus tapped his pocket.

  Rsiran could sense the four knives Brusus kept in his pocket, plus the one that he kept tucked into his waistband. He grabbed Brusus’s sleeve and focused on the other side of the door. He didn’t know what was on the other side. There could be nothing, or she could have placed some kind of heavy barricade to block the door. Sliding into that could create some risk.

  But if he pulled himself into the Slide… that might allow him the time to determine whether the Slide would pose a danger. Sliding in that way gave a different type of control, and he thought that he might be able to Slide away if something went wrong.

  They moved slowly at first, a steady drawing sensation that brought them past the door. For the first time, Rsiran had a sense of control of the speed, as if he could move more quickly or more slowly were he to need to, and the colors that flashed past during the Slide were plain browns, those of the door its
elf.

  When they emerged, he checked to ensure they were safe, before letting out a shaky breath.

  “Damn,” Brusus whispered.

  A woman screamed. A long length of iron came swinging toward them. If Rsiran did nothing, Brusus would get hit in the head with it.

  He sent the knives streaking from his pocket to block the iron. With the force of his push, he sent the bar arcing up and away, flipping from his mother’s hands. The knives hung in the air a moment until he pulled them back to him.

  She stared at him, her eyes wide.

  “You…”

  Rsiran nodded. “Me.”

  “How is it… How are you… He said you were dead!”

  Rsiran glanced over at Brusus, but he’d crossed his arms over his chest and kept his face neutral.

  “Who said I was dead?” Rsiran asked. “Father?”

  That would be the final piece, wouldn’t it? The last brutal part of his punishment for his father to claim to the rest of his family that he had died. That explained why Alyse had been so surprised to see him, but why hadn’t she shared the truth with their mother?

  “Not your father. He regretted what happened. Never said it, but when he drank…”

  Rsiran didn’t need her to finish. His barriers would have been down, and she would have been able to Read him. That was an advantage that Rsiran would not share.

  “Who told you that I died?”

  Who else would have cared what happened to him? Who else would have wanted to tell his mother that he had died? Other than his father and the fact that he was completely disinterested in what happened to him, Rsiran couldn’t think of anyone who would have reason to tell her that he’d died.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. She took a step toward him before catching herself and stepping back. “You… You look different.”