The Dark Ability: Books 1-4

by D. K. Holmberg

  “But you’ve worked with them before.”

  He nodded. He was an idiot, and had he any true training as a smith, he wouldn’t have made the same mistake. “I’ve worked with them before, but not together. They must have a similar heating point.” He shook his head. The only thing that he could think had happened was that the heartstone had fused with the grindl. “Now I think I’ve ruined the plate.” He slapped the table again in frustration.

  It hadn’t been the only plan he had to find some way of learning what his father might have been doing for the Forgotten, but it had seemed the easiest, and even that had proven not nearly as easy as he’d hoped.

  Anything else would be riskier.

  “Wait until it cools,” Jessa said.

  “Won’t matter.”

  She laughed softly. “You don’t know that. Wait until it cools and then see what you can learn. Don’t let yourself get too upset just yet.”

  Rsiran nodded, but didn’t have much hope that it would work. And if it didn’t work, for him to find why the Forgotten had used his father meant that he—likely they—would be taking another dangerous trip.

  Part of him actually looked forward to it. If he could understand what happened to his grandparents, to Jessa’s parents, even to Brusus’s mother, maybe he would better understand what the Forgotten were after.

  Jessa watched him, almost as if Reading his thoughts, and Rsiran turned his attention back to the form around the heartstone.

  When the metal cooled, Rsiran pried the iron bars away, tapping at them with a hammer to separate them. It probably didn’t matter how gentle he was with the bars. There wasn’t anything that to destroy within, anyway. Pouring the heartstone onto the plate had probably already done that.

  With the bars removed, he dropped them to the floor of the smithy and kicked them to the side. He’d have to clean the heartstone off them later.

  The light gray heartstone atop the plate had hardened to a smooth sheen. Once heated, heartstone cooled much harder than it was in its raw form. Lorcith had strange qualities like that as well, making it so that it couldn’t be reheated once it took a shape. Heartstone could be heated again, but it would never be as soft as it was when first shaped.

  Rsiran turned the block of heartstone over in his hands. The metal surrounded the plate, leaving barely an edge free. Had he been more careful with the form—or even more prepared—he might have a better chance of getting the plate separated from the heartstone. Now it didn’t really matter. The grindl would have fused with the heartstone. He might be able to pry the iron portion of the plate off, but even that wasn’t guaranteed.

  “Did it work?” Jessa asked.

  “Not like I’d hoped. The grindl and the heartstone fused during the heating process.”

  “Like an alloy?”

  He hadn’t known that grindl would join with heartstone before. If nothing else, some good could come of his mistake. “Something like that.”

  “So now you can’t separate them?”

  She took the brick of heartstone from him and ran her fingers across the surface. Heartstone was slick, much like how it felt when he tried to push or pull on it. There was always the sense that it would slide free of your grip, and pushing on it was no different. Jessa held it tightly, as if afraid that she would drop it.

  “Not that I can tell,” he said.

  “Can you, you know, sense it?”

  He should have thought of that first, and not needed Jessa to suggest it to him. “Maybe…”

  He took the brick of heartstone back from Jessa, gripping it carefully, and ran his hand over the surface. The heartstone pulled on him, but the way that it did had less intensity now. That must be the grindl, he realized.

  Rsiran pushed away the sense of lorcith in the smithy, forcing it to the back of his mind so that he could focus on heartstone. With lorcith pressed away, he could feel the draw of heartstone, and he felt the steady sense tickling in his mind. Rsiran focused more intently, drawing the awareness of heartstone even closer.

  Something like an image bloomed in his mind with flashes of color, both green and a deep blue. He could see it, as if it were right in front of him. The ridges that he’d detected had meaning, but what?

  There was almost a familiarity to it, as if he’d seen it before, but he couldn’t tell why. The intricacies of the metalwork amazed him. Whoever had made this was an incredibly skilled smith.

  The contours that he detected reminded him in some ways of the Ilphaesn mines, almost as if this was intended to serve as some kind of…

  “It’s a map,” he whispered.

  “A map?”

  He nodded. That had been what he’d sensed, the rough sense that he’d felt beneath his fingers. Now that he’d said it, he felt even more certain that it was some sort of map, but a map of what?

  And why would his father have had it? There had to be something, some reason for his father to have this, but Rsiran couldn’t think of one.

  Unless Jessa was right. Could Thom or someone else with him have hidden the plate in the wall of the hut after he’d left?

  If so, why? If they had intended for Rsiran to find it, there were better places to have hidden it.

  That left his father. The fact that Alyse had been abducted made it even more likely that his father had left it, and that whoever he’d taken it from wanted it back.

  Maybe that was the reason his father had been locked in the room where he’d found him.

  When he’d gone to Asador, he’d found his father trapped in a building barricaded with alloy that made it difficult for him to Slide past. He’d never really considered the reason that his father would have been held like that, but maybe this was it.

  Could it be the reason Alyse had been abducted?

  And now, without his father here to ask, he had no way of knowing why he’d left this behind, and no way of understanding why it might be important.

  Chapter 13

  Rsiran slid the page across the table. Brusus picked it up and leaned toward it, frowning as he studied it. Haern glanced at it, but shook his head as he had the first time Rsiran had shown him the drawing of the map that he saw within his mind.

  “You say this was on a sheet of metal?” Brusus asked.

  Rsiran nodded. Movement near the back of the Barth caught his attention and he turned. Ever since the attack, he didn’t feel nearly as comfortable here as he once had, regardless of the fact that Brusus now owned it and claimed it safe. A lute and bandolist played together tonight, the combination almost haunting.

  He picked at the carrots on his plate. He’d eaten everything else and mopped them through the remaining gravy. His ale sat relatively untouched in front of him. “It was what I found in the hut. That’s what those other two were after, I think.”

  “Thought you said they were after you,” Brusus said.

  That had been what he’d assumed, but if they know of this map, and if they thought that he had it, could it be that they’d come after him for that, rather than his ability to Slide past the alloy?

  “I don’t really know,” Rsiran said. “Did they want me or my father? They probably knew that taking Alyse would motivate him more than me.”

  Brusus touched the page, letting his fingers trail across the ink. Rsiran had done the best that he could reproducing what he saw in his mind, but he didn’t have any real artistic skill. Copying the map was difficult. There was a sense of elevation in the map that he couldn’t reproduce on the flat page.

  “You ever see anything like this?” Brusus asked Haern.

  Haern’s scar twitched, and he rubbed his fingers over it. “Not like that. Venass don’t use maps like that. Don’t need to,” he said. His fingers ran along the surface of the scar—a memento of his escape from the clutches of Venass.

  “You’ve been other places besides Venass,” Brusus suggested.

  Haern shook his head. “Map like that, you’ve got to know what you’re looking at to know why it’s important.”r />
  “Are you sure it’s a map?” Brusus asked.

  Haern touched the page again. As he had when Rsiran had first shown it to him—when Haern had come to resume his training—he tipped his head to the side, and his eyes went distant. “It’s a map,” he said. “Can’t See what it is. Rsiran blocks it.”

  Brusus sat back and waved over the waitress. She was an older woman, with gray hair pinned up. The green in her eyes had a softer hue, less intense, and almost muted compared to everyone other than Brusus. He whispered something to the woman and she nodded curtly, making her way back to the kitchen.

  When he turned back to the table, he smiled sheepishly. “Have to keep the tavern running, you know?”

  Jessa looked up from the dice she spun on the table. “Tell Rsiran he should let this go,” she said to Brusus.

  Brusus met her eyes and something passed between them. Silence settled over the table for long moments. The sound of the music and the voice from the few other patrons around the tavern filled the silence.

  “She dies if he does,” Haern said.

  Jessa looked over. “Who dies?”

  Haern nodded to Rsiran. “His sister. Can’t See it well, but what I See tells me that if he does nothing, she dies.”

  “And if he goes looking for her? Who dies then?” Jessa asked.

  Rsiran hadn’t realized that Jessa felt so strongly about him trying to find his sister. He knew that she didn’t feel that he owed his family anything, but more than that, she hadn’t shared. Did she fear losing him, that he’d return to his family if he tried to help? She should know him well enough by now to know that he had no interest in that.

  But how could he leave his sister? Especially if she would die if he did nothing?

  “Can’t See that, either,” Haern said.

  Jessa slapped the dice and swept them into her hand. She shook them forcefully and spilled them across the table, letting them go skittering across, stopping when they clinked against Rsiran’s mug. “You can’t See much of anything, now can you? There’s not much good to your visions if they don’t help us, Haern.”

  Haern frowned, the long scar on his face twitching again. “Never said there was much good to what I See. Sometimes, all they offer is fear. But I’m not telling you what might happen. I’m telling him.”

  Jessa pushed on Haern’s arm. “And what about me? I thought you cared what happened to me.”

  When Jessa finally relaxed, Haern put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her against him. “You know that I care. I know what you been through, girl. And I know what happened, how it eats at you. You can’t want the same for him, not if you have a hope for more.”

  Jessa lowered her head and didn’t meet Haern’s eyes. Rsiran reached for her, but she pushed him away as well. “How can we even think about more when all we have in front of us is darkness? Everything we do leads us deeper in, doesn’t it? First with Josun, then with Venass, and now what will this bring?”

  Jessa had never shared her concern with him before, not like this, and not with such sadness. Rsiran had many of the same concerns, but he had thought Jessa would support him with what he needed to do. If she didn’t, he wasn’t sure that he would be able to go alone.

  “Don’t know where this will end,” Haern said. “I’ve been trying to See that since we first met Josun Elvraeth. But those visions are closed to me. Too dark, or… something. I can focus only on what I can See. That’s all I can do. And she dies if he does nothing.”

  “Can you See where she is?”

  Haern shook his head. “Not that clear. I think your connection to her blurs her. When I focus on her, try to See her, I get flashes of color, and then darkness. When I add you,” he said, nodding to Rsiran, “the flashes continue. Without you, she’s gone. With you, she’s got a chance. Don’t even know what that is, though.”

  Jessa laughed bitterly. “Flashes of color. That’s what you want Rsiran to base his decision on? What if those flashes of color are wrong? What if he tries something and she dies anyway?” Her voice caught. “What if he tries something and he dies?”

  No one spoke for moments. Brusus finally broke the silence. “What do you intend to do? I can see from your face that you have a plan.”

  Rsiran caught Jessa’s eyes and tried to hold her attention, but she shook her head and looked away. “I can’t do nothing,” he said. Even before Haern had shared his vision, he knew that he couldn’t simply do nothing, not if his sister was in danger, and not if there was something that he could do that would help.

  “What you plan means going after the Forgotten,” Brusus said.

  He’d thought about that, but there was no guarantee that the Forgotten were responsible for abducting Alyse. The more he thought about it, the less the Forgotten made sense. His mother wasn’t Elvraeth, and the Forgotten—those he’d found in the Forgotten Palace—had all been Elvraeth once. So while his family might have been exiled, they were not Elvraeth, and not like the Forgotten they’d faced before. In that, he was more like Jessa with her parents, and less like Brusus.

  The Forgotten had wanted to use his father, though. That much was undeniable. Rsiran might not know why, but he needed to understand if he wanted to help his sister. Which meant he needed to reach his father. Either he needed to get word to him, or he needed to find someone who could.

  And he thought he had a way of finding someone who could.

  “Not the Forgotten,” Rsiran said. “They may have been responsible for taking Alyse, but there are too many places for them to hide her. I need to know what they want from my father.”

  “You can’t intend to try and pull him from Venass,” Brusus said.

  The thought had crossed his mind, but he didn’t think that would be possible, not without help, and knowing more than he did about Venass. He’d been working with Haern, but he still had far to go before he was even as skilled as Haern. And if a single man without the ability to Slide could deter him, what would happen if he tried going to a place where there might be several, dozens even?

  “Not that.”

  “What then?” Haern asked.

  Rsiran scanned the tavern, then directed his answer to Haern and lowered his voice. “You know about my connection to lorcith and heartstone,” he started.

  Haern’s mouth tightened. Rsiran worried what Haern might say about his plans even more than Brusus or Jessa.

  “I can use that connection to find the metal. It’s easiest when I’ve sensed the metal before. Well, really it’s easiest if I’ve forged the metal before, but if I’ve sensed it, there’s a certain signature that I can follow.”

  “Aw, damn, Rsiran,” Brusus said. He glanced at Jessa whose face had turned into a neutral mask. Rsiran noted the tension in her shoulders and the set of her jaw and knew that she was angry. “You think you can find your father, don’t you?”

  He nodded. “I need someone who knows Venass—”

  “Haern knows Venass,” Jessa said.

  “Who knows it today. And Thom knows Venass. They must trust him, or at least control him enough for them to have sent him after us. If I can find him”—he caught Jessa’ eye—“if we can find him, use Thom to either reach my father, or get word to him. Either way, I think that’s the first step to learning what happened to Alyse. Maybe finding out who’s after me in the city.”

  “First of all, why do you think he’ll do your bidding? And secondly, do you not remember what happened the last time you encountered him?” Brusus looked at Haern as he asked. “If he’s that skilled with Compelling, you put yourself in danger. What if he’s able to Compel you? Or Jessa, since I assume that she’s going along with you.”

  “I’m going to have to find a way to convince him to help,” he answered, but didn’t yet know how. “And I don’t think he can Compel me.”

  “You place a lot of trust in your ability to prevent a skilled manipulator from reaching your mind. Trust me when I tell you that it can be more difficult than you realize.”


  Rsiran solidified the barriers in his mind, adding the connection to lorcith and then adding a hint of heartstone. He’d always thought that he did it by imagining the connection to the metals. Lately, he wondered if maybe he pulled on something in the metals themselves, almost as if whatever arcane properties they possessed that allowed him to reach them, to push on them, also allowed him to draw on their strength as he protected his mind.

  “Try to Compel me,” Rsiran said.

  Brusus smiled and shook his head. “You know that I can’t Compel—”

  Rsiran snorted. “You Push, but I think it’s all part of the same ability. How long has it been since you’ve been able to Read me?”

  Rsiran used lorcith constantly to hold his mental barriers in place. It was the easiest for him to connect with, and almost as secure as heartstone. There had been a time when Brusus had claimed his thoughts were too loud, and he realized he was at risk when his barriers were down. Since then, he’d taken to maintaining a constant barrier, strengthening the connection with heartstone, trying to silence his thoughts, at least to prevent other skilled Readers from accessing them. Had he not, some of the things that he knew, that they’d learned, would be dangerous for them.

  “It’s been a while,” Brusus admitted. He shifted his attention to Haern and then Jessa. “Not that I try often, but Rsiran was challenging. When we first met him—”

  “You don’t have to explain,” Rsiran said. He remembered how Brusus had tried Reading him, and how he had used the barriers that he’d learned to form in his mind because of Alyse. That had mostly blocked Brusus. When he’d met Josun, he realized that he was able to crawl beyond those barriers, as if they were no obstacle to him whatsoever. “But try Compelling me,” he said.

  Brusus shrugged and rested his arms on the table. His eyes flared a deep green. Like when he used his abilities, he could no longer focus on Pushing out the image of pale green eyes as he hid his natural strength. Pressure built in Rsiran’s head, and he felt the attempt and used a combination of lorcith and heartstone to push back. Brusus grunted and let out a frustrated breath.