The Dark Ability: Books 1-4

by D. K. Holmberg

  “We need your help. We didn’t take your sister to force you to help, but to keep her safe. That’s the only reason that she’s here.” She turned to Ephram. “Tell him, Father. Tell him that we don’t want to steal the crystals. Tell him what you do and why he needs to help.”

  Ephram watched Rsiran’s face. “I don’t know that it will matter. He’s been changed, hardened. There’s nothing that I can say that will make a difference.”

  “He needs to know that the guilds don’t want to steal the crystals.”

  Ephram motioned to Rsiran. “Look at him. He has held one. I see it in his face. He should know the truth then.”

  “What truth?” Rsiran asked. “What don’t you want to tell me?”

  Ephram eyed him with a hard expression. “We don’t want your help to steal the crystals because we already possess them.”

  Chapter 33

  Rsiran started laughing. “You expect me to believe that you possess the crystals?” he asked. “I’ve seen them. There’s no one who would be able to take them from that place.”

  Ephram nodded. “It is good you feel that way.”

  “And I know how hard it was to reach. You can’t expect me to believe that you have some way of accessing it to have taken them.”

  Sarah looked at her father, her eyes practically begging him.

  What weren’t they telling him?

  “Come with me then, Rsiran Lareth.”

  Ephram started toward one end of the room.

  Rsiran looked over at Jessa, and she shook her head. “We shouldn’t be here. I’m not sure what this is, Rsiran, but it’s dangerous.”

  “Please,” Sarah said to him. Her entire demeanor had changed. When Rsiran had seen her while she shadowed him, chasing him through Elaeavn, he had viewed her as angry, and hard, but that wasn’t the woman he saw before him. This woman was uncertain, and practically begging him to help.

  Why?

  It was nothing like the way that the Forgotten or Venass had demanded his help. And he had no fear that he couldn’t Slide from here. The connection to lorcith remained, and he doubted there was anything they would be able to do to prevent him from escaping.

  Then what did they want from him?

  The only way to know was to follow.

  “I have to know,” he told Jessa.

  She sighed softly, breathing in the fragrance of the flower tucked into the charm.

  Rsiran started after Ephram and exited through a wide doorway at the other end of the room, with Jessa by his side and Sarah following. A long hall opened up, with glowing blue lanterns hanging on the walls on either side. Elvraeth lanterns, much like he’d seen in the palace. Jessa pulled on his arm and motioned down the hall.

  Farther down the hall, Rsiran saw a small shape moving. At first, he thought it was a young child, but that wasn’t what he saw. Then the figure disappeared.

  “What was that?” Rsiran asked.

  Sarah motioned him to move faster.

  The hall changed. The walls were silver and dark gray, and he realized they were formed from lorcith and heartstone, but neither pulled on him, as if his awareness of the metals suddenly faded. He attempted to reach for the metal, but found nothing. As if they weren’t there.

  He began to feel uncertain.

  These were the alchemists he dealt with now. Even more than with Venass, if there was anyone with the knowledge of how to prevent him from reaching the metals, wouldn’t it be they?

  They turned down another hall. Carvings in the walls seemed to move, and to follow them. Rsiran had the sense of pressure all around him, but didn’t know where it came from. The air felt thicker and smelled a bit like lorcith, mixed with the sweetness that he associated with heartstone.

  Another door.

  Sarah pushed it open. Blue light spilled out from the other side.

  The light was similar to what he’d seen in the room at the Alchemist Guild, but less blinding, and with more a sense of purity from it.

  He had seen this light before.

  Rsiran started forward, but Ephram grabbed his shoulder.

  “You have already held one of the Great Crystals, Rsiran Lareth.” His voice was a reverential whisper. “You will not be allowed to hold another.”

  Rsiran stared, unable to believe that Ephram had simply walked him to the crystals. And that the tunnel that connected his father’s smithy, the one that essentially connected to the Alchemist Guild, connected to the crystals room in the palace as well.

  The crystals sat atop platforms much like they had the first time he’d seen them, only this time, none of them pulsed with any regularity, calling him to it. Rsiran didn’t even know which of the crystals he had held. From here, they appeared much the same.

  “You… you can access them?” he asked.

  He watched Jessa try stepping forward, as if drawn to the crystals, but something seemed to push against her. Not Ephram, and not Sarah, but a force. She winced, and tried again, but again she failed.

  “The crystals are only able to be held once, and only by those with the blood of the Watcher.” He studied Rsiran as he said it, as if waiting for some sort of reaction.

  “I don’t have the blood of the Watcher.”

  “And yet you held one of the Great Crystals,” Ephram said. He nodded, almost a bow, and then turned away from the crystals. Sarah motioned for them to follow.

  Rsiran started to follow, but Jessa held back. “I can see them… One. It’s like it’s drawing me,” she said in a whisper.

  Rsiran considered the crystals and wondered which of them drew Jessa. Would it be the same one that he’d held or would she be drawn to a different crystal? What would she see if she held one? Not lorcith and heartstone, as he suspected he had seen. Rsiran didn’t know the purpose of that vision, but that must have been what he’d seen. And his had been so different from what Della had described.

  “It’s like it wants me to go to them, but won’t let me,” Jessa said.

  Rsiran nodded. He could feel the presence now that he knew to pay attention to it, almost like a physical sense, an invisible barrier that blocked access to the crystals. Would he be able to Slide past as he had when he reached them the first time?

  He didn’t know. And he didn’t care to try.

  They turned and followed after Sarah. A door that he hadn’t seen closed behind them, moving as if on its own.

  They found Ephram and Sarah back in the room at the Alchemist Guild house. The blue glow had shifted, turning softer, less intense.

  “You can see that we have not stolen the crystals, nor do we need you to steal them for us,” Ephram said.

  “What then? What do you need me for?”

  Ephram motioned for him to follow. A different door opened, and they walked through a narrow hall. This was less ornate than the last, and the walls were stone rather than lorcith and heartstone. Rsiran didn’t have the same hesitation to follow as he had before, and Jessa trailed along with him silently.

  Rsiran lost track of the number of turns that he took. Enough that he could no longer remember them. The heartstone map, the one that he kept fixed in his head, didn’t help. The connection was either too weak, or the map didn’t include this place.

  Ephram led them to a simple room. Stone benches lined the walls and a massive table sat in the middle, filling the small space. Marks were made on the table, and Rsiran noted that some were done in lorcith. Others were made with heartstone. Still others were either metal or stone.

  He motioned them to sit and took a seat at one end of the table. Rsiran couldn’t see the mark in front of him. Sarah stood behind him, watching Rsiran with uncertainty.

  “When you reached the Heart and held one of the Great Crystals, we were aware of you, Rsiran Lareth,” he began. “Though we were aware of you long before that.”

  Rsiran felt a flush come to his face. “What was on the pages that I took from the drawer at the guild?”

  Ephram clasped his hands together on the table an
d leaned forward slightly. “That room is the Hall of Guilds,” Ephram said. “It is a place where all of the guilds can meet privately.”

  “Why would the guilds need to meet privately?” Jessa asked.

  It was the first time that she’d spoken since they had seen the crystals. Rsiran wondered what she was thinking. He’d told her what he’d seen when he’d held the crystal, and she knew how his Sight had changed.

  “Because the guilds protect Elaeavn.”

  She snorted. “Protect? You think that you’re more powerful than the council?”

  Ephram tipped his head. “Not more powerful, but complementary.”

  “And you want us to believe that you protect the crystals?” Jessa said.

  “You have seen that we do.”

  Rsiran rested his hand on Jessa’s arm. “Why show me? If you have the crystals, and if they’re protected, then what do you need me for?”

  “To correct a mistake.”

  “Whose mistake?” Rsiran asked.

  “Yours.” Ephram leaned back. He let the word linger. “You see, when you penetrated the Hall, you inadvertently reached something that you should not have been able to.”

  “What was it?” Rsiran asked. The drawer had pulled on him, almost as if he had been meant to reach it. In that way, it was much like the crystal and how it glowed for him, the color pulsing until he lifted it, held it in his hands…

  Even now, the memory of the way the crystal called to him remained strong.

  He watched Jessa, wondering what it must have been like for her to see the crystal pulsing, to feel it drawing her, but be unable to reach it.

  “It was a list,” Ephram answered. “Encrypted, so as to keep it safe, but we have reason to believe that safety has been compromised.”

  “A list of what?”

  Ephram frowned. “Many things, but within the pages you took was a master list of the guilds and the guildlords.”

  Rsiran felt his heart flutter. How would he have managed to get a list of the guilds? And why would that have been what called to him? Unless there was something more that Ephram wasn’t telling him.

  “I didn’t take—”

  Ephram waved his hand and cut him off. “Oh, I know that you didn’t take it intentionally, or at the very least, that you didn’t know what you had taken, but that doesn’t change the fact that you did take the list. And now, others have begun searching for the guildlords.”

  Rsiran swallowed. “The smiths?” he asked. “That’s why the smithies have gone empty?”

  Ephram nodded. “They started with the smiths. The Miner Guild has been impacted, but we managed to keep the guildlord safe. The Travel Guild remains intact, as does the Forest Guild. And the Thenar Guild”—he motioned to Sarah—“they are too few to ever really be in danger.”

  “I don’t understand.” Those weren’t the guilds he knew about. The alchemists, miners, and smiths, but the others? The weavers? The Potter Guild? The fishmongers? He could name a dozen others, but… none were as powerful as the first three. And none with the power of the alchemists.

  Ephram sniffed. “That much is clear. When you took the list, others managed to claim it. They think to break the code and identify the guildlords. They have started by claiming the great smiths, taking as many as they can, thinking that one of them has to be the guildlord. We have tried summoning the remaining smiths, especially those with smith blood.”

  Rsiran blinked. “Like my father?”

  Ephram nodded. “Like your father.”

  If they had been summoning the smiths, that meant the map that Rsiran had found had been for his father, not from him. “And when I claimed the map?”

  “You have a quick mind. The map, a guide to the hall for each master guild member. It was for your father when we tried to call him in. You… you reached him first, it would seem. Better than the alternative.”

  “The alternative? He’s in Venass. Is that any better than with the Forgotten?” Jessa snapped.

  Rsiran thought of what he’d seen in Asador, the way that his father had been trapped. After speaking to his mother, he had thought it was tied to that, but what if there was a different reason?

  And there were other smiths that had been taken there. Rsiran had seen the smithies, had detected lorcith. Had the Forgotten really thought to try to find the guildlords?

  “You don’t understand,” Ephram said. “The smiths are part of something greater. That is what the Forgotten seek.”

  “Just why should Rsiran care?” Jessa asked.

  Ephram’s dark green eyes flared a moment. “It is because of Rsiran that we have to worry about the guilds.”

  She laughed. “You think that he cares about the guilds? After what he went through, and the way that his father treated him? Why should Rsiran care about the guilds?”

  “You were treated poorly,” Ephram said. “That is not something that can be changed. But we can correct other mistakes, ones that put not only our people, but everything in danger.”

  Jessa laughed again. “You have a high opinion of what the guilds can do.”

  “And you have a mistaken opinion if you think all that my guild does is create metal,” Ephram said. He slapped a hand down on the table. “You have seen the crystals, and he has held them, so I know he understands what this is about, even if he needs me to tell him explicitly.” Ephram leaned forward. “The guilds, and the guildlords in particular, protect the crystals. Without us… Without the guilds, there would be chaos.”

  Jessa shook her head. “Why, because someone else would use one of the crystals?” She stood, pushing back her chair. “You’re no different from the Elvraeth, thinking that everything you do has such meaning. And like them, you want to use whoever you choose to accomplish your goals. The exiles wanted to use him, you know that, right? And Venass. They wanted to use him. Both thinking that he can reach the crystals. And he can. So what makes you think that you can keep them safe?”

  Ephram glanced to Sarah, and sighed. “There is only so much that we can do, but without the guildlords in place, we cannot keep the crystals safe. Rsiran reaching them is proof of that.”

  “How do you know that Rsiran is proof?” Jessa asked. Rsiran touched her arm, but she shook her head. “No, Rsiran. They make assumptions, but what if you can reach the crystals even after they have their guildlords intact?”

  “From what we can tell, the exiles are on the move. Knowing that they have abducted members of the guild, and their families, we sought out your sister before they could claim her too. Not to draw you in, as you believe.”

  “You sent them searching for me.”

  “Because we need someone who can help us reach them before they can cause more harm to the guilds,” Ephram said.

  Rsiran thought of the Forgotten Palace, and when he’d gone there alone. They had spoken of taking the smiths. That had to have been what he’d overheard. Had they taken other guild members? “What of the miners?” Rsiran asked.

  Ephram sighed. “Most are safe. They began shifting lorcith, pulling what needed to be removed from the mines to protect it.” Rsiran arched a brow at this, wondering if that was why all the lorcith he’d discovered in the mines had been mined, and wondered why they had chosen those pieces “But the Forgotten have spies among us, and we fear what they know,” Ephram continued. “That is why I only trusted Sarah to watch your sister.” He rested his hands on the table and leaned toward them. “That is the reason why we need your help, Rsiran Lareth. We must stop them before they bring the fight to Elaeavn. We must stop them before they attack us here.”

  Had Haern Seen this? Was this why he told him that he would need to pick a side?

  Rsiran hadn’t thought there was a side he could choose. How could he choose between either the Forgotten or Venass after what they had done? But the guilds…

  With a sigh, he looked to Jessa. She stared back at him, the look in her eyes telling him that she already knew what he intended to do.

  Chapter 34


  “I don’t like this, Rsiran,” Brusus said.

  Rsiran crouched on the hillside outside of Asador, the wind whistling around him. The distant city was mostly dark, but occasionally, he noticed lorcith. Never any heartstone. He didn’t know whether to be reassured or worried by that.

  He glanced at Brusus. He wore a long black cloak and carried the lorcith sword that Rsiran had made along with a pair of lorcith knives. His eyes were drawn tight as he stared through the darkness.

  “I can do this, Brusus.”

  “I’m not questioning your ability, it’s whether you should do this that I question.”

  “What did Della say?” Rsiran asked. That had been the reason they had delayed before departing. After leaving the Alchemist Guild through the Hall of Guilds, he sensed Brusus and Haern wandering in the tunnels beneath the city. He shouldn’t have been surprised that it had been they who had followed Jessa and him into the tunnels. They hadn’t gotten anywhere near the guild. Without the map, Rsiran wondered if they would have been able to reach it.

  “She said… She said to listen to you.” Brusus shook his head.

  Rsiran smiled, knowing how hard the words would be for Brusus to say. “I brought you along, didn’t I?” he asked.

  “I don’t count?” Jessa said.

  She crouched next to Haern, armed with a half-dozen knives and carrying her lock-pick set rolled in her pocket. No flower was tucked into the charm tonight. Rsiran wondered when she would grab one to rectify the fact that she hadn’t picked one earlier. Haern stared briefly at the bracelets Rsiran had made for him. The lorcith had almost grudgingly acceded to allowing him to make them. No heartstone had been added, not for Haern. Every so often he touched them, prying his fingers underneath. Rsiran hadn’t been willing to have Haern come with him without a way to know that he couldn’t be Compelled.

  “You brought me,” Brusus said, ignoring Jessa, “but you also brought them.”

  He pointed to where Sarah and Valn stood. Neither bothered to crouch down, not as Rsiran did. Another man, one they called Usal, stood next to Valn. Rsiran had learned that he could Slide as well.