The Lost Prophecy Boxset

by D. K. Holmberg

  How did I get so turned around?

  It did not matter now. What mattered was that he needed to reach the room where others waited. It was his turn to issue commands.

  He stepped quickly to the door and let himself out. It was better lit out in the narrow hall, the lamps along the walls nearly brushing at his robe. At least he had kept them lit, so he could see his steps on his way out. He had not worried that someone might have followed him.

  He found his way quickly to the end of the hall, and without pausing, he quickly went down, taking the stairs two at a time as he readied himself for what he would say to the others. They would obey.

  At the second landing, he turned down the hall. It was wider here, enough so that at least four men could walk abreast. Fewer lamps were lit along the walls. The shadows seemed to stretch out ahead of him, pulling at him. He ignored the sensation. He passed several doors before coming to the one he wanted.

  It looked aged and unused for years. Rust clung to the steel hinges, and cobwebs adorned the metal handle. He was careful when he pushed it open not to disrupt either. It was best to let the appearance of age and disuse remain.

  The room was dark, as he had instructed. The glowing light he generated reappeared, casting light about the small room. Seven Magi were now visible around the room, few close enough to another to touch, and all with hoods covering their faces. He suspected few knew of any of the others’ involvement.

  “It is good you all are here before me,” he began.

  It was best to establish his authority. It was best to instill a little fear. He saw them nod. Good, he knew. They would follow.

  “We must know what Alriyn is about. We must know what the general is about.” He paused looking about the room.

  He had not had time to discover what Endric’s ploy was, though he suspected. The man had always been far too informed. It had to have been his decision to send the apprentices north, but they would be too late to do anything.

  “What reports do you have?” he asked.

  He waited and listened. Most he had already heard. Some were new. They would be ready. He smiled and could almost see the fear in their eyes as he did.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Jakob emerged from the Cala maah with his mind throbbing, the heightened awareness it brought nearly overwhelming. Anda’s hand on his was almost too warm, too soft, and too smooth, though he was reluctant to remove it. There was comfort in her touch. But when she slipped her hand from his, he acquiesced.

  What did I see?

  A dream, he knew. Nothing but a dream.

  But it was so real!

  Anda watched him, an unreadable expression to her strange eyes.

  What does it all mean?

  “Are you feeling well, Jakob Nialsen?”

  Jakob enjoyed the accented way in which she said his name. Looking at her, he noted for the first time how beautiful the daneamiin were.

  There is distinct grace to them, a beauty. The words seemed to come distantly, from another part of himself, but what part?

  She smiled, almost knowing his questions.

  “In there. I felt…”

  How to explain that he nearly vomited before the Cala maah? How to explain his visions? Would she think him insane if he did tell her? Would she look upon him differently? For some reason, the idea bothered him.

  He averted his eyes, focusing instead on reattaching his belt and sword around his waist.

  A slender finger brushed under his chin and nudged his face upward. He nearly jumped at the sensation. The touch of her hand on his face was electrifying. Jakob looked into her eyes and saw an understanding there.

  “Yes,” she told him. “In there, much is not what one expects. You do not have to share, but many gain understanding in speaking about what they saw.”

  That was certainly the truth. “I saw myself as a…” A what? A god? Brohmin said they were not gods. What then? “An ancient. I watched my daneamiin granddaughter run through the grass.” Memories of the visions returned. There was clarity to them unlike any of his previous dreams. “I saw men attack a beautiful daneamiin city and knew I could do nothing to stop it.” A tear slipped down his cheek, and he wiped it away.

  Her eyes widened briefly, though it could have been his imagination.

  “I saw myself as a man,” he continued, “receiving this sword.” He pointed to the blade now strapped to his waist. “My father said that this sword has been in my family for ages. Did I see the first Nialsen given this sword?”

  Jakob looked up at Anda, at her soft and strange eyes, her hairless head. The understanding in her eyes had not left. There was something more there, too, though he did not know what it was.

  “Why did I see these things?” he asked.

  She studied him before answering. “In the house of the Cala maah, one sees many things. Some are easier to see than others. You were tested according to an ancient custom, one that has not been practiced in many years.”

  “They called me Uniter of Men.”

  Anda nodded. “You were tested. You must restore the balance.”

  She rested a hand on his shoulder, which eased his mind somewhat. Self-doubt, concern for his sanity, racked him. That had been what bothered him for months, ever since the Magi had arrived in Chrysia. That fear had worsened during his journey, and stayed with him still. And now there was too much he could not explain.

  He didn’t notice Salindra approach. Her voice shook him from his thoughts.

  “Where have you been?”

  Her voice was different than he remembered, tinged with an unfamiliar tone. Worry? That didn’t seem right.

  Jakob noted her standing more upright, stronger somehow, and more confident. Brohmin trailed her with a strange bemused expression on his face. The daneamiin Elin escorted them both, his fluid steps silent.

  “I was summoned by the Cala maah,” he told her.

  Brohmin nodded. “She did not believe.”

  Salindra cast him a quick glance that was full of a confidence he had not seen before.

  What happened to her?

  He studied her a long time before he could see it. The ahmaean. No longer did it leech from her. A soft haze now encompassed her, not as bright as the daneamiin, but solid nonetheless.

  “You’ve been healed,” Jakob said, unable to conceal his surprise. What would he see if he looked at her ankles? How was that accomplished? And when?

  Surprise flashed across her face. “How did you know?” she asked, a remnant of the injured Salindra to her voice. “No. Never mind. Where have you been?”

  He looked from Salindra to Brohmin before glanced at the two daneamiin standing nearby. “I was summoned by the Cala maah. There was a…” How would he explain what happened to him? Brohmin called it a testing, but it had not seemed like any sort of test. “A ritual,” he decided.

  “What did you see?” Brohmin asked. “Did you pass the test?”

  What did Brohmin know? Would the Cala maah reveal his visions? Did they even know what he saw? He glanced to Anda, thinking she might help him explain what he’d seen to him. “I saw peace, war, and my sword.”

  Brohmin chuckled. “The visions of the Cala maah are not explained so simply,” he said, but did not press for details. “But did you pass?”

  Again, Jakob glanced to Anda. “They called me the Uniter of Men.”

  Brohmin sighed. “Then we might have a chance,” he said softly. “With so much time wasted, I worried…”

  “We haven’t wasted time,” Jakob said. “We’ve only just arrived.”

  “You entered the Cala maah five days ago. In that time, I have confirmed your vision. She is captured. If you truly are the Uniter, then we need to find her before it is too late.”

  Jakob’s head swam. “Five days? We only arrived a few days ago.”

  Salindra looked at him strangely then. “No, Jakob. It’s been nearly a week.”

  “How?” he asked Anda.

  “Time is sensed di
fferently at the heart of the house,” Anda answered.

  “How is that possible?”

  Anda looked up at the huge tree growing from the top of the tall building. “What are days to the tree? To the tree, a day passes in a heartbeat.”

  “Yet our time is measured in such heartbeats,” Brohmin said. “And we must find answers and Alyta. If you are the Uniter, there should have been something you saw in the Cala maah that would help us, some key.”

  Jakob looked from Brohmin to Salindra. How could he explain that which he didn’t understand himself. Would explaining his visions help to find this key? What was he to make of him as an aging god watching his daneamiin grandchild? Did it mean that the gods created the daneamiin? He didn’t know how that knowledge could be relevant. The Urmahne taught that the gods created everything, so of course they created the daneamiin.

  Yet Brohmin tells us otherwise.

  The vision of the daneamiin being attacked was no more helpful. What was he to take from watching these peaceful people attacked? There was nothing he could understand, nothing, save sadness.

  The other vision, though, was different. He had seen Sharna, had even seen Niall. What did that mean? Sharna gave Niall a sword and explained its forging. His sword.

  Sharna had called the sword Neamiin when she’d given it to Niall. Novan had called it the same when he saw Jakob with it.

  Much ahmaean was poured into its making.

  He glanced down at the sword at his side, other thoughts floating through his mind.

  You must use the key, Uniter of Men.

  Aruhn had told him he must use the key.

  “My sword,” he whispered, the realization came to him, a cold sense of unease sweeping through him as it did. It had been slowly vibrating since he had left the Cala maah. Jakob had ignored it, concerned with other things.

  Forged by those who have never used a weapon.

  What is this blade?

  Jakob looked to Anda and thought that he understood.

  She looked back at him with her exotic eyes. “They gave of themselves willingly for its creation,” she said.

  Brohmin looked at them, his eyes widening. “The sword?”

  “Why?” Jakob asked Anda, ignoring Brohmin’s question.

  “There was no other way.”

  Jakob pulled his sword from its sheath and truly looked at it. The slow vibrating intensified, and he nearly dropped it, but his hand held firm. Turning the blade over, he noticed something he had not seen before. The brightness it held on one side, what he had always thought reflected light, had a familiar appearance. Hazy.

  Ahmaean.

  The ahmaean radiated from the blade only to be pulled back by the other side, the darker side. He squeezed the hilt, felt the carvings underneath the wrapping, and knew without removing it what was carved there. Three daneamiin were engraved along the hilt, arms linked and blank faces looking out. He had seen them but had not known, seen them in his vision, his dream.

  “Who were they?” he asked Anda.

  “They are Neamiin,” she answered.

  His sword. The key.

  How?

  Another question came to him: how had his family inherited this blade?

  “How will the sword help us find her? How is the sword the key?” he asked Anda.

  Her face was blank, unreadable. “Only Aruhn could say.”

  “I have never known Aruhn to give simple explanations,” Brohmin said.

  Anda smiled at that. “It is not his way,” she agreed. “Answers must be found within.”

  “You sound like him,” Brohmin teased.

  Elin actually laughed then. “She should. She is his daughter.”

  Brohmin eyed her appraisingly before turning to Jakob again. “The sword… Could it really be so simple? Why come here? What did Alyta need for us to understand?” He looked up to Jakob. “What else did you see?”

  Jakob thought for a moment. Until he understood them better himself, he wasn’t sure sharing the actual visions would do any good. But there was one he would share. “Niall…”

  “You saw Niall Tinmril?” Brohmin stared at him, realization creeping across his face. He started pacing, and Jakob could see the wheels in the man’s head begin to turn. “Of course. You’re descended from him.”

  “How do you know?” Is this the story of the sword his father knew?

  “One often sees visions of their forefathers in the Cala maah,” Elin answered.

  Forefathers? But he’d seen gods and daneamiin grandchildren…

  Anda watched him, a strange expression on her face.

  “Who was Niall Tinmril?” he asked, ignoring his line of thinking. The name sounded familiar to him, and he suddenly realized why. He’d had another vision, one where Sharna had spoken to Niall. But why? What was he meant to learn?

  Brohmin answered. “A Uniter, and believed to have been the last. It was said he was one of the greatest, and some thought he might be the prophesied Uniter, one called the nemah.” Brohmin shook his head. “Alyta did not think he was, though.”

  “Niall is remembered by our people as a great man,” Elin said. “We still sing of him.”

  “I should have suspected,” Brohmin said. “I don’t know why I did not think of it sooner.” He paused. “The sword,” he began, looking at the blade held firmly in Jakob’s hands. “I have heard its description and still didn’t know.”

  “What does that have to do with any of this? How will that help us find Alyta?” Salindra asked. She had been looking around at the daneamiin, at Jakob, at Brohmin, unable to speak.

  “Neamiin is the key,” he answered. “It’s a word with many meanings in the ancient language.”

  “I only know of one,” Salindra said.

  Brohmin nodded. “The ancient language is complex, and I have translated Neamiin as ‘weapon,’ but it could also be ‘key’ or—”

  “Or guide,” Salindra said.

  Jakob stared at his sword. “There is something different about it now. The sword has its own ahmaean.”

  Brohmin stared at it, squinting as if unable to see it, before looking up to Jakob. Salindra just stared at the sword. “You see it?”

  Jakob nodded. “Now.”

  “Before?”

  Jakob shrugged. Had he seen it before? He had not known what ahmaean was, was still unsure how he saw it, but did not think he had seen it before. “I don’t know,” he answered, but knew he had not. The constant vibrating was new too. It had hummed with him in battle, vibrating with the energy and strange sensation he knew when he fought, but he kept that to himself, unsure what it meant.

  Anda answered for him. “Neamiin is again awake.”

  Jakob looked at the sword, stared at the ahmaean swirling around the blade, and finally decided to sheathe it. It was dizzying watching the blade, and he worried about his sanity as he stared at it. “What now?”

  “We leave,” Brohmin answered. “We will use the sword to find Alyta, find the last, before Raime can.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Jakob stood for a moment, looking around him. The ahmaean that filled the city shone brightly. He looked up the tree at the heart of the Cala maah with its ahmaean reach toward every corner of the settlement. Hundreds of daneamiin moved overhead in the trees.

  It was beautiful.

  Would he ever see the beauty of this place again? Brohmin had been here and returned, but with the groeliin willing to attack, and the daneamiin seemingly unwilling to fight, would this place end up like the city in his vision?

  He stared at the rope bridges overhead, before turning to the trees themselves with their hidden stairs and rooms grown into their trunks. “I wish…”

  Anda touched his elbow, guiding him forward. Her hand lingered on his arm as they walked, and he welcomed her touch. They reached the base of the tree in which he’d stayed, and he saw that his belongings had already been gathered, tucked neatly into a woven sack of daneamiin design. Brohmin and Salindra were waiti
ng there. Anda led the way until they reached the edge of the clearing where they were joined by Aruhn and Elin. Jakob glanced over his shoulder to the huge building of stone, grass, and tree. He stared for a long moment at the Cala maah, trying to capture the image in his mind.

  Will I see something as magnificent again?

  Jakob was slow to leave this place, but the others were quickly falling out of sight as they traveled at a brisker pace. Occasionally, Anda slowed to give him a chance to keep up. As she did, she would take his hand to lead him faster. A wave of peace flushed through him as she touched him.

  Along the path, he saw a flicker of golden eyes and dark fur. Jakob stared, hoping for a better view, wondering if what he saw was real, before shaking his head. The strange itch in the back of his mind, annoyingly familiar, returned suddenly. With it came a memory from his visions, something he had known as one of the gods.

  Nemerahl.

  There was a soft chuckle inside his head, so faint it could have been imagined, then it was gone and with it the strange itch. Was this the creature that had saved him when the Deshmahne had attacked? He could not shake those golden eyes and had never seen another creature like it, yet he knew nothing of the nemerahl other than what he had seen in his vision.

  They came to a clearing in the trees, and Brohmin, Salindra, Elin, and Aruhn were already there, waiting for them near a wide-open plain. To the north and south, trees met grass in an almost straight line as they reached the edge of the forest.

  He’d not been here before. Where were they?

  The thought left him as he saw what lay before them. A huge gash cut into the earth and stretched for as far as he could see to the north and south. Jakob tried to see to the other side, but it was too far. He imagined that he saw green, but could make out no other details.

  The Great Valley.

  He had never expected to see the valley. The stories of Jarren Gildeun came to him, when he spoke of the Great Valley and his desire to cross it. Yet he never had. Even knowing he had crossed—that the daneamiin were on the other side—was different than actually seeing it. How had he crossed when Jarren could not? The size of it was immense, the far side barely even visible.