The fire in Raime’s eyes seemed to dance faster.
“I am something you could never be. Chosen by the Conclave. A Uniter. Are you jealous, Raime sen’Rohn?”
Raime’s eyes widened, if it was possible for fire to widen.
“Oh, I know you, Raime,” Brohmin said, his voice powerful. “I know who you once were, and what you have become.”
Raime laughed again. “You know me, then? You? One who can barely crawl without your goddess to hold your hand? You could have been powerful with the gift you were given!” Raime roared. “Face me then, Hunter, and I will show you how little you know. I will show you what you could have become!”
Brohmin lunged forward then, faster than Jakob would have thought possible, leaping for Raime’s throat. He stopped suddenly in midair, an arm of dark ahmaean reaching at him, suspending him, and then was thrown back, slamming into the wall.
The thick stone cracked from the impact, and blood trickled from the corner of Brohmin’s mouth. It flowed down, running over his chin and dripping into his lap, yet Brohmin stood. He stared at Raime, and then all of a sudden, it was Raime who was forced backward, slamming into the wall. He was thrown, yet Brohmin had not moved.
The impact on the wall Raime hit was minor compared to where Brohmin had hit.
Raime stood and smiled. “They teach you Mage tricks, do they? Or did you steal some of mine?”
“Not Mage,” Brohmin answered, his voice still strong. He wiped a sleeve across his mouth, removing the blood. “And not stolen. I am nothing like you.”
“No,” Raime answered, sneering. “You are nothing like me!”
With the words, another arm of dark ahmaean reached Brohmin, and he was again lifted into the air and thrown across the room. It seemed as if Brohmin would be slammed headfirst into the other wall, but at the last moment, he slowed and dropped to the ground.
Brohmin stood and faced Raime, and then it was Raime who was cast backward, though he was thrown not more than two feet.
Raime was far stronger than Brohmin.
“Enough of this!” Raime snarled.
Alyta struggled weakly to sit up, but Raime turned, slapping at her with a tendril of his thick ahmaean, and she was thrown back. Just as quickly, he turned back to Brohmin.
Brohmin clutched his throat, then his head. Blood began to pour from the corners of his eyes and dripped from his ears. It came fast, rivers of it. Anda turned away, unable to watch.
It can’t end this way!
What could he do?
If he did nothing, Raime would kill Brohmin. He still might, but Jakob could try to intervene.
In a single motion, he unsheathed, and ran at Raime, trying to ignore the terror racing through him. His sword hummed, vibrating energy as he neared the High Priest.
The next thing he knew, he was pulling himself off the floor next to a wall, his head aching from the impact.
Jakob looked up slowly and saw Brohmin lying motionless in a heap, a growing pool of blood around him. His face was covered in it.
“You,” Brohmin whispered, his voice weak. “It rests with you.” Brohmin took one more breath and then stopped.
Jakob’s arms and legs did not want to work, ignoring his mind’s command. Somehow, he found the strength to stand; it was all that he could do.
Raime looked at him, his eyes piercing. Jakob shrank from the heat of his stare. “This boy? He is your hope?”
Alyta said nothing.
Jakob felt a moment of panic. Did she still live?
He watched and saw a slow rise and fall of her chest, but her eyes were closed. Alyta would be unable to stop the High Priest. And he couldn’t stop him. If Brohmin had failed, what hope did Jakob have?
“It cannot be this half-breed.” He pointed to Anda before facing Jakob again.
The heavy fire-filled eyes assessed him. There was a sense of being rifled through and then discarded. He shuddered, unable to resist.
“I have wondered why you wanted him,” he said, looking briefly at Alyta. Her eyes had opened, and she blinked a few times to clear them. “Do you foresee as I do?”
The High Priest had seen something of his future. What did he foresee?
Was that the reason Jakob had been taken? Was that the reason he spent long nights as a captive of the Deshmahne?
“Who is he that you would hang your hopes on him?” Raime asked Alyta.
Alyta shook her head then. It was her first movement since Raime had thrown her back upon the table. “More than you could ever become.” Her voice was quiet, yet the words were like a slap to Raime’s face.
“This boy? More than me?” he roared. “How can you expect this boy”— a black-robed arm stretched toward Jakob—“or this half-breed”—he sneered, pointing to Anda—“to stop me?”
Ahmaean swirled around Raime, his cloak, in a thick fog. Jakob could almost smell it, a foul, unnatural rot. The man shook and stalked to Alyta. “I will show you how little you know.” A thick arm of ahmaean stretched toward Anda, and her eyes widened.
Jakob reacted. The slow pulsing in his mind quickly hummed to a powerful buzzing.
He pulled at his ahmaean carelessly, a sharp yank, and felt his mind shift as he did. Jakob stifled a scream, ignoring the pain as a new awareness entered his consciousness. Anger roared through him, and he pulled at the ahmaean stored within Neamiin, held it within him.
The dark ahmaean nearly reached Anda. Visions of groeliin attacks on a beautiful pale city flashed through his head, Raime at the vanguard of the assault. Another memory flowed through him, a Deshmahne attack barely survived, Anda hiding in a tree chased by a terrible High Priest. Anger rushed into him with the memory. Raime would not attack Anda. Not again.
In anger, Jakob used his ahmaean and let his mind lash out.
It struck Raime, throwing him down. As suddenly as he had struck, Jakob was lifted into the air and thrown backward. He hit the wall hard before being pulled forward again, dragged across the stone, and then thrown back. His jaw snapped shut with the blow, and he barely moved his tongue to keep from biting it off. His body ached with the force of the impacts.
His vision began to fade, and only his hold on the ahmaean around him kept him alert, and it was tenuous.
“A Mage?” Raime laughed. “This boy is a Mage? I am more than a mere Mage and this half-breed combined.”
Suddenly, Anda was thrown toward him. Jakob lurched forward, lunging for her, reaching for her before she struck the wall.
As he caught her, Raime laughed again.
“Your hopes,” he started, pointing to where Jakob and Anda lay, “have failed. Now that I’ve secured the artifact you thought to hide in Vasha, you are lost, damahne. Your people are lost.”
Raime stepped to the table where Alyta lay and spoke once more. “It is time, damahne.”
He pulled his hood back, exposing a hairless head, wrinkled and burned. The skin was dark and scarred, pitted. His eyes were sunken, pools of red the only evidence of eyes at all, and his lips were pulled back in a snarl. It was a face of evil.
“Your time of power is over, and mine will begin. And you have nothing that can stop me. Does it hurt that the damahne will undo themselves?” he asked, pulling a long rod of silver metal from his sleeve. It reminded Jakob of what he’d seen when he’d been captured. Power pulsed from it, as dark as the ahmaean flowing around Raime.
Anda sat upon his lap, tangled up in him from how he had caught her. “You must save her, Jakob Nialsen. Only you can.”
“Even if I’m the nemah, I don’t know that I can.”
Anda touched a finger to his lips then. A wave of relaxation flowed through him. Her ahmaean brushed his, briefly. “You are more than you yet know.”
“I don’t know what I am.”
“You are more than a man. More than a Mage. And you must not let that man win,” Anda said.
“I’m not fast enough with the sword to stop him.”
“You have another weapon,” she said, tapp
ing his forehead. His head pulsed in response. “Neamiin was your guide. You are the key.”
“The Cala maah, the vision of the sword. Neamiin is the key.”
Anda looked at him and held him with her soft eyes. “The time for doubting is over, Jakob Nialsen. You must believe.” She paused and touched his forehead again. The touch was soft and slow. “You are the answer.”
Visions jumped through his mind, flashes of dreams, Alyta, Sharna, Shoren. The scenes quickly blurred together, and a voice spoke to him. One often sees visions of their forefathers in the Cala maah.
“I don’t know what I am,” he said again.
“Then we must save her for answers,” Anda said. “She will guide you.”
“How?” he asked.
Anda looked to Alyta before turning back to him. “I will help.”
He wondered what the price of it would be this time and hoped he was willing to let her pay it. Jakob looked up. Raime stood near Alyta’s feet, one hand on her ankle, the strange rod held out.
Alyta’s eyes were wide. Her ahmaean now flowed from her, through the rod, and into Raime.
How powerful would he be if he stole her ahmaean?
Jakob rushed at him, sword extended.
Raime laughed, and Jakob slowed, like he was running in water. The sword flew from his hands to stick in the wall behind Raime, impaled all the way to the blade guard.
“You cannot stop this,” Raime hissed.
Anda snuck around the table and placed her hands upon Alyta’s chest. She poured out her ahmaean, like she had done outside the Tower wall, but somehow different. This time, she poured her ahmaean into Alyta before pulling it back, slowing the flow of Alyta’s ahmaean into Raime.
Raime smiled as Anda worked, and she suddenly jerked her hands back. Anda staggered back from the table, eyes wide.
Raime’s eyes danced. “I have taken more of your kind than I can count, half-breed,” he snarled.
Anda moved back against the wall, shaking her head. “I can do nothing, Jakob. I had thought…” she began, and then hung her head in sadness.
“What is he doing?” he asked, but already knew the answer.
“This is how he steals her ahmaean.”
Alyta’s eyes were filled with pain, and tears streamed down her cheeks.
“How do I stop it?” he asked.
Anda looked at Jakob, then at Alyta with a look of hopelessness. “I am unsure if it can be stopped.”
Raime laughed again. “It is almost complete, damahne. The end of your kind.” His lips tightened again in his strange smile, and the fire of his eyes danced madly. “Even as we speak, my men and my groeliin come to this city and fill it. The once proud city of Shoren Aimielen will be no longer.”
Jakob reached for Alyta, and Raime sneered at him, forcing him back.
He grabbed for a handhold, trying to stay near Alyta, and managed to grab her wrists, grasping the markings. The tattoos were cool to the touch and dented her flesh.
“You can do nothing to stop this, Mage. I have won.”
Jakob felt Alyta’s ahmaean flowing from her wounds and knew the High Priest was right. He couldn’t stop it, because he did not know what it was Raime did.
With his hands around her small wrists, Jakob felt her ahmaean flow over his, touching. It stretched up his arms, toward his head, before settling in his chest and flowing down his legs. It was like the ahmaean of Neamiin the way it added to his, strengthening him.
Alyta met his eyes, and a smile came to her face, followed by relief. “I can, though,” she whispered.
With her words, Jakob felt a surge from the ahmaean already flowing into him from Alyta’s wrist wounds. Like water, it flowed, and like a river, it came toward him in a rush. He could not believe the woman had so much left within her after what he had seen draining from her. It ripped through him, into him, touching and filling every part of his body as it added to his own ahmaean.
As it did, his energy was now much stronger than he had ever felt it, his own ahmaean now swirling in colors he had never seen or imagined.
He felt something new in his mind, like a shifting, though not painful as it had been before. This time, it was gentle. Awareness came to him as he felt a part his consciousness previously closed to him, now open.
Alyta sighed, and he looked up. A knowing smile curled her lips, and she nodded at him. “Now he is damahne.”
Raime stood frozen, staring at Jakob. His eyes were ablaze, and the fire seemed to leap from them. “What is this?” he screamed. His voice filled Jakob’s mind. Raime looked to Alyta, and she smiled. “What have you done?” Raime hissed at her. “What have you done?”
She ignored his questions and look at Jakob. Her blue-green eyes caught his, and she smiled again. “I… thought… so,” she whispered.
“Why?” he asked.
“No time. Focus your mind,” she told him, her musical voice labored. “Use the new part of your mind.”
She took a slow breath, and he wondered how much longer she had.
“Accept it. It is there.” With the words, she fell silent.
Raime stood before him, eyes angry. “You would steal from me?”
He replayed the words Alyta had said, trying to understand. He was aware of a part of his mind now, a part he had only glimpsed before. Jakob focused his thoughts, trying to do as she had told him, and felt that new part of his mind open to him, and could reach it if he tried.
Raime stretched his oily ahmaean toward Jakob, reaching out with black tendrils. It moved slowly, and Jakob jerked back, away from it, trying to avoid it touching him. He feared what would happen if it touched his ahmaean.
Accept it.
The voice was whispered in his head.
How?
You can feel it. Let it guide you.
He needed to end this with Raime, needed to do something to help Alyta, bring her back, give strength back to her. And for answers. Did he have enough time?
Raime’s tendrils of ahmaean were nearly upon him. The High Priest’s face was a flat mask of anger that Jakob felt radiating from him. “No Mage steals from me!” he roared.
Jakob shook his head, some understanding coming.
He did not know what he was but knew he was no Mage.
He reached out toward the new part of his mind, calling to it, and it responded, coming alive. His ahmaean was familiar, but changed. It was stronger, filling his whole body with the sensation, almost vibrating him with waves of energy within him. He let himself feel it, let it grow within him. As he did, a new awareness came to him, a new sensation.
Jakob reached out with his mind, touching the new part of his consciousness. He could feel his ahmaean, could manipulate if he tried, could stretch out with it, rather than simply drawing it in. His ahmaean responded and pulsed in response.
The dark tendril from the High Priest was upon him.
Jakob felt it touch him, cold, deathly cold, and felt an emptiness sink into his heart, his mind. It called to him, telling him to give up, to give himself over to the High Priest. That sense of hopelessness filled him as it had before at the hands of the Deshmahne. But this time, the power of it was overwhelming, and Jakob found himself giving over to it.
“Fight it, Jakob Nialsen!” Anda called.
Her soft voice stirred him, shaking him.
Anda?
She was saying something more, but he could not hear it.
Who is Anda?
The question came from a voice in the back of his mind.
She is nothing, you are nothing.
Jakob sank into the hopelessness again, drifting, drifting, until he no longer remembered where he was.
He felt a touch on his hand, light at first, soft, and he ignored it. There was no point in fighting. The High Priest had won.
You are nothing, the voice reminded.
Yet the touch did not leave him. Instead, it stretched up his arm, sinking into him. He thought he had known it once, but did not remember.
> It is nothing, the voice told him. Give yourself to the Deshmahne.
And he would. He knew he would. What other choice did he have? What could he do against the power of the Deshmahne?
Nothing, because you are nothing, the voice reminded.
Yet still, there was pressure on his hand, on his arm.
It pushed upward, toward his mind, and met resistance. He felt a struggle and knew it was useless. He was useless. The pressure on his mind receded, and he knew it was lost.
Give yourself to the Deshmahne!
So he did. He felt something flowing from him, a slow trickle at first, and it burned. He did not know what it was he felt, only that he had no other choice.
You are nothing, the voice reminded, give yourself to the Deshmahne!
The flowing from him began to hurt, a cold agony. There was nothing he could do to fight it.
The pressure remained in his hand, his arm, and now was settling into his chest. It warmed him in waves. Wave after wave of warmth hit him, filling his legs, his arms, and finally working up into his head. He knew this feeling, had felt it before.
It is nothing!
Anda?
Anda’s touch had once warmed him like this.
She is nothing! You are nothing!
No, he knew. Anda is not nothing!
The flowing from him slowed, an agonizing burning as it did, before halting.
Give yourself to the Deshmahne! the voice demanded.
His body trembled, and he was filled with pain, a thousand needles stabbing through him.
No! His mind cried the answer.
He was suddenly aware of his body, all of it, and remembered who he was.
Jakob called to the unmasked part of his mind and felt his ahmaean. He shook his head, clarity slowly returning.
It raced through him, filling him, and he stretched it before him, pushing away the tainted ahmaean of the High Priest’s touch. Where his ahmaean touched the High Priest’s, it was like a blow to Jakob’s mind.
Steeling himself, he pushed.
The High Priest’s fiery eyes widened.
Jakob pushed harder, forcing his ahmaean out, pushing back whatever Raime had done. The tendrils of Raime’s black ahmaean slid away from his pressure, forced away from him, back into Raime. It inched back slowly.
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