What would he say to her once he knew that she was a Mage?
“I have not seen a man fight like you. Not only you, but the three of you, and with skill unlike anything I have ever witnessed.” His gaze once more went toward the fallen groeliin. “What are you?”
Roelle readied to answer but was not given the chance.
Shadows flickered nearby, and Selton caught her attention, noting another brood swarming toward them. This one had more than fifty in it.
“We can talk more, but first, first we deal with this,” she said.
Fenick looked where she pointed, his eyes narrowing again as he saw the oncoming groeliin. “After. I will have answers.”
“After,” Roelle agreed.
Chapter Fifteen
Allay's heart pounded as they raced along the road. Rumors of problems in Gomald plagued them the last few leagues. They had plagued them since leaving Saeline. Each person they encountered shared the same tale: rebellion in the city and war with the north.
The war he believed. He had been a part of it and had seen the Deshmahne movement. As they drew closer to the city, every story they heard about the rebellion spoke of more violence, more death, and he began to wonder how much of the city would remain for him to rescue.
“We can slow the horses,” Mendi said.
Allay glanced over, noting her muscular frame confidently holding the horse’s reins as they galloped along the road. The wind blew her hair back, and the sun shone on her face.
He still couldn't believe that Rosahd had been Deshmahne. How many more of the Magi had converted? After what he'd seen in Vasha, how the Deshmahne were using the abandoned mines, he should have expected more. Maybe he'd gotten out of the city at the right time.
Would Saeline send word to Endric as he’d asked?
Allay had to hope they would. The Denraen needed to know what they might face.
And now? Now he returned to Gomald without his Mage advisor, fearing the Deshmahne influence, but more important, fearing for his people. If there was a rebellion taking place, Allay couldn't deny that it had just cause. How could he, when he had seen the way the dark warriors honored their gods?
They topped a rise, and in the distance, he saw the outline of Gomald.
The city was massive, stretching for miles until it reached the sea. Huge ships lined the port, their tall masts and furled sails visible even from here. The scent of the saltwater drifted toward them, a scent that struck a chord within him, a sensation of being home.
And yet Gomald was not the same home as it had been years ago before his mother had passed. That had been a time when his father still had most of his sanity. Since losing his wife, his father had been a changed man, focused on his anger with the gods and a perceived slight. Allay knew better than to challenge his father on that.
From where he stood, he could see smoke rising from within the city, from multiple places. The fires down in the city made the rebellion a reality.
Mendi looked over at him. “What do you intend to do?”
“I'm the crown prince, aren't I? I need to deal with this rebellion.”
Could he stop it? Could he regain control of the city?
A more troubling question came to him. Given all that he’d seen, with all the Deshmahne attacks they’d witnessed—including the conversion of the Magi—did it even matter if he did?
Allay and Mendi led their horses into the city. There'd been no resistance at the city gate, though Allay had not expected any. The city was crowded as usual, and he noted the dress of dozens of different places, letting him know that whatever might have happened in Gomald—if there had been a rebellion—it hadn’t impacted trade in the city.
They weaved their way along the side streets, not wanting to draw attention to themselves. The people they encountered in the streets hadn't seemed any different from when he had left. There was always an edge to the people of Gomald, especially over the last few years, mixed with the activity from the ships coming in and out of the port. A few ships came from farther north, and a few came from the east, out of Thealon, circling around Salvat. Then there were the ferries that traveled between Salvat and the mainland.
“It seems a little too quiet,” he said.
“I don't know about quiet, but unsettled. Something is not quite right here.” They turned the corner, slowly making their way toward the palace, when Allay caught sight of a group of men and women brawling in the street.
“Careful,” Mendi said.
She put her arm out, blocking him from stepping out onto the street. Allay thought it amusing that she would be so protective, and he didn't push. Besides, he wanted to see what was taking place here. As he watched, he realized they weren't brawling, but battling. Brawling involved fists or clubs. This involved swords and knives.
Blood spilled, with men falling, one with his belly cut open, his intestines spilling onto the ground. Someone screamed, and Mendi stopped, turning toward him with an alarmed look on her face.
“We should get away from here,” she said in a hushed voice. “You're not even armed. We should've been more careful entering the city.”
“I don't think anyone's going to recognize me.”
“I think you'd be surprised at what people are able to recognize. You’re not exactly an unknown figure in the city.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” she said, pulling him back toward one of the side streets they had just come off, “that the people of the city would recognize you. Even though you’ve been away.”
Allay hazarded a glance back toward the fighting and realized it was Gomald soldiers battling regular citizens.
This was the rebellion. This was what the rumors he'd heard on their way back to Gomald had been about, and the reason he needed to be careful.
Mendi seemed to have recognized that more quickly than he had, and hurriedly moved him along the street, wanting to get him away from the fray.
Allay shook himself, knowing that he needed to move, but Mendi had stopped short.
A dark-skinned man stood barely a few paces away from them with his sword outstretched, pointing it at Allay. A wide grin spread across his face, and his eyes practically twinkled. Nearly a dozen others were arrayed behind him, men and women, each armed with crossbow or sword unsheathed, all prepared to attack, and almost all of them had their gaze fixed on Allay.
There wasn't anything he could do, nothing that would keep him and Mendi safe from harm. She was right: he had been a fool coming in here unarmed. He left the city without a sword and returned without a sword. He was to have had Rosahd and the Denraen with him, but they had been lost in Saeline.
Coming to the city empty-handed had placed himself at risk, as well as Mendi. And for what?
He could do nothing to defend them, save for the short knife he had in his pocket.
“Prince Lansington. It’s wonderful that you've returned to the city,” the lead man said, as his gaze drifted past Allay to the fighting taking place down the street. “I think you'll find that the city is less welcoming than it was the last time you were here.”
Allay started to say something, but Mendi cut him off with a slight shake of her head.
“Silence?” the man asked with a grin. “Interesting that you would choose silence. Had your father chosen silence, this might be different, but he thought to destroy half of his people, thinking that he would introduce the southern religion to Gomald.”
Allay's mind raced. Was this man saying that they were not with the Deshmahne? If so, then maybe Allay would be fine. Perhaps he'd be able to tell them that he was trained by the Magi, that they should listen to him.
But, what proof did he have? Now that Rosahd was gone, there wasn't any way for him to prove where he had been, or what he had learned, other than him asking his people to take his word for it.
Allay got the sense that it didn't matter what he said. He got the sense that his relation to his father was all that mattered.
When Allay started to object, someone punched him in the stomach.
He caught sight of Mendi shaking her head again, warning him from saying anything, but he wanted only to keep her safe. Now, returning to Gomald, he couldn't even do that. She had been free when they were in Vasha, and now they had returned to Gomald—his home—and she was not only a slave again, but she would be captured and harmed, all because of him.
Allay could do something about that. If nothing else, he would protect her.
He looked up, and one of the men sneered at him. “You don't need my slave. Let her go.”
The man slammed his fist into Allay's stomach again, sending him to the ground groaning in pain. As it passed, the man chuckled. “You think we would release her so that she could run back and find help for you?” He punched Allay again. “No, I think she will remain with us. As will you. The crown prince will be useful.”
Chapter Sixteen
Alriyn descended the stairs below the pedestal where the mahne had rested for centuries. The heat assaulted him, growing more intense with each step. Something clicked, and darkness overwhelmed him as the pedestal sank back into place, an oppressive sort of darkness, the kind where he feared he would never see light again.
“You could've left the pedestal elevated,” Alriyn said.
Somewhere in front of him, Endric answered. “If they penetrate your barrier, and they enter the library, I don't want them to know where we might have gone.”
“You're the only one who knows how to find this?”
Endric grunted. “There aren't many still alive who remember this pathway. Your predecessor saw to that when he shuttered the mines.”
Alriyn followed Endric and Novan, trailing them, using his sense of the manehlin to do so. Even in the darkness, he could sense the energy and the power that surrounded both men.
As he followed, his mind raced back, thinking of the Mage he had succeeded. Tresten, his mentor, and a man he had thought would eventually rise to the role of the Eldest, had been Second Eldest prior to Alriyn unassuming the title. Tresten had been his friend, more than a mentor, something of a father figure to him. Losing him had been a huge blow to the Magi, and seemed as senseless today as it had then. He had slipped and fallen, perishing from something as simple as an accident, proving that even as powerful as the Magi were, they had the same human frailties as everyone else. They were not the gods.
The shuttering of the mines had happened several decades ago when the city had been attacked. Alriyn knew some of the details, though parts were hazy to him. Tresten had been responsible for protecting the city. That had been a time when the teralin mine still flowed, a time when the miners of the city and their guild held a loftier position. It was a time when the Magi still believed they needed the teralin to help them speak to the gods.
It had been Tresten who had closed the mines and ended that tradition. And few had objected. Teralin was difficult to work with and could be explosive in the wrong hands. Many Magi had been burned working with the ore. Tresten was widely regarded as a greater scholar than even Jostephon had ever been, and when he declared that teralin served no purpose in worship, the change was quickly adopted. Now, no one used teralin other than for decoration. Remnants of it were still found throughout the city.
What Endric alluded to—that Tresten somehow silenced those who knew of the path—made Alriyn wonder if maybe there was a connection to the teralin that Alriyn didn’t fully understand. Could there have been more to that invasion all those years ago than what any of them understood?
There was a hand on his shoulder, and Alriyn stopped. Novan. With the energy around him, the historian made for an imposing presence in the darkness, one he didn't necessarily have in the light.
“Wait here,” Novan whispered.
In the darkness, there was an ominous tone to his words. Was there a reason that Novan wanted him to wait rather than following them? Was there something more taking place here than what he knew?
There had to be. The simple fact that he was here, that he was in the tunnels beneath the mahne chamber, was enough for him to know there was more taking place than he had ever imagined.
Alriyn waited, feeling unsettled. Before today, such a sensation would have been unexpected, the kind of thing he would've chided himself for even feeling. After facing the Eldest, after experiencing an attack such as he had, at the hands of the Magi turning to the Deshmahne and away from the gods, seemed unimaginable previously. But here he was, dealing with that reality.
Novan returned, and Alriyn felt him as pressure upon his manehlin, that strange aura that surrounded him that he had seen since… since Alriyn had forced his mind open.
“Come on.”
Alriyn followed the sense he detected of Novan. As he did, he became aware of Endric's energy as well.
“Where are we going? I thought the plan was for us to circle back around, reach the Deshmahne.”
“We will, but first, we need to do something here,” Endric said.
As he said it, Novan tapped his staff, much like he had before, and again, patterns appeared along it, glowing a bright white.
Alriyn found it odd that teralin would glow so brightly and so cleanly like that. Usually, teralin was a hot metal, one that, if anything, glowed more of an orange, but whatever Novan was doing, whatever power he was pushing through the staff, had changed that for him.
With a light now glowing, Alriyn could see the inside of the tunnel. They were in a wide cavern, one with a ceiling that stretched twice or more higher than he was tall. Walls were far away from him, room for a hundred or more people to fit comfortably. They were carved smoothly, reminding him of the way the palace had been formed, seamlessly as if carved from the mountain itself.
Veins of black ran through the walls, twisting like streams, coming together in thicker patterns that became almost swirls of color, before thinning once more.
Stranger still for Alriyn was the fact that along with the veins of teralin, there was what appeared to be swirls of energy, much like the manehlin that he saw surrounding himself, Novan, and even Endric.
“Why here?” he asked.
Novan turned, his hand gripping his staff and a ferocious intensity on his face. Alriyn almost took a step back, wanting to get away from the immensity of the historian's gaze.
“This place once housed artifacts your Founders believed owned by the gods. That is what the Deshmahne think to acquire. That cannot happen.”
“You said that it once housed them. Where did they go?”
A hint of a smile played across Novan's face. “Where, indeed? There was a great Mage who saw fit to close these mines, a man who understood risks that your people took by possessing them. He monitored these tunnels for safety. When the mines were lost, he closed them, to prevent the same potential danger that had been here before.”
“Tresten?”
Endric’s gaze scanned the cavern. The look on his face made it clear that he had been here before. There was a pained expression, one that Alriyn knew had a story to it. He was curious about that story, and about the source of the pain.
What would Endric have seen here, in this empty chamber where there was nothing other than the veins of teralin in the walls? What would the general have seen here?
The answer came to Alriyn. He felt foolish for not having seen it before. “You were part of that attack, weren't you?
Endric nodded as he started toward a row of bins, searching in each one as he made his way around the cavern. At each, he paused, peering into it, before looking up. With each, a growing concern became clear on his face.
What had been here? Nothing now—that much Alriyn could tell even without searching the bins the way Endric did. The Council had only known the mines were closed for the safety of the city, a
nd that once they had proven that teralin was no longer—or had never been—required to reach the gods, there was no real need for it to be mined here. Why mine the ore when it didn't help them access the gods? Why leave the mines open when doing so only placed them in danger? And so the Denraen, with the assistance of Tresten, had closed the mines.
“Is that why you brought me here?” Alriyn asked. “Was there something here you wanted me to see?”
“This place once housed many items of power,” Endric said returning to them. “Most were moved. A few had remained.”
“You said most. What happened to the rest?” Alriyn asked.
Novan scanned the room, the intensity of his eyes shifting, becoming more a look of concern. Novan had always been confident, bordering on cocky. For him to have concern, Alriyn worried what was missing from here.
“Empty? Completely?” Novan asked.
Endric only nodded. “I was warned but didn’t have time to investigate. They got here before us.”
He and Novan shared a look. This time, Alriyn was certain it was concern on their faces.
“What is it? What has you worried?” Alriyn asked.
Novan swallowed. He tapped his staff, and the light glowing along its surface began to fade. “It means… It means that we might already be too late.”
“For the city?” Alriyn asked.
Novan turned to them. “This is about more than the city. This has always been about more than the city. There is a reason the Deshmahne wanted to reach your home. The same reason Vasha has always been so well protected.”
“More than the mahne?”
“I think that is part of the appeal, but yes, this is about more than the mahne,” Novan said. He shifted his gaze to Endric. “I thought we would have more time.”
“I thought she would have more time,” Endric said.
The Lost Prophecy Boxset Page 81