He needed a break. Sitting up, he looked around the inside of the wagon. A pile of nails rested in front of him, and he had resisted the urge to count through them, knowing that the task would feel overwhelming. The spheres were set into boxes, hay resting beneath them to prop them up and keep them from rolling around.
There were other items within the wagon, several of them made of lorcith. He found a section of chains and cuffs that looked as if they were meant to confine someone, but no key. He was hesitant to try them, not certain whether he would end up trapped.
Other things within the wagon were less likely weapons. He came across stacks of flattened steel, something that would’ve been useful when he had still worked in the forge, but it wasn’t clear what purpose there was for those. He didn’t find anything else that was similar to it. No other flattened sections of metal, and nothing else quite as strange. There were pots, dozens of them, each of them made with reasonable skill, and it seemed to him they were gathered for someone to sell or trade them. With something like that, the wagons could give off the real appearance of a merchant.
He came across a drawer full of jewelry. He had been hesitant to reveal that to others before finally showing it to Elise. She had agreed with him that they needed to keep it to themselves, mostly because others might be tempted to sneak in here and claim them. Much of it was gold or silver chains with jewels attached to them. Haern didn’t know much about the value of such items, but Elise suspected they were worth quite a bit. If they didn’t get the help they hoped they would in Asador, the jewels might buy them safety. And if for some reason they weren’t able to make it to Asador, Elise thought that they could sell them and ensure their survival.
Haern had never had much skill with creating jewelry. He’d seen some of the things his father had made, mostly for his mother, but he had stopped doing that over the years. His father’s exquisite creations would have been unrivaled by any jeweler within the city.
He leaned back, staring at the nails. There was something about this he still didn’t get. Someone would have to have exquisite control over lorcith in order to effectively create these explosive spheres. The Forgers couldn’t have that type of control, could they?
He had been around the Forgers a little and had seen the kind of things they were able to do, but none of it seemed quite that well controlled.
What if he was going about this the wrong way?
He was trying to shove the nails back into place, forcing them into the holes they’d come out of, but what if the person who’d created this hadn’t done so in that manner?
Haern frowned. If not, then they would have used some way of creating circles within a sphere of lorcith.
He didn’t have any idea how that might be possible.
There came a tapping on the top of the wagon, and Haern pulled the door open and climbed on top. Elise guided the horse, staying near the forefront of the procession. She had taken it upon herself to lead the journey, and no one had argued. For the most part, everyone seemed to agree Elise was the right person to do so. She was so organized that others just fell into line behind her.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Look up there,” she said.
Haern scanned the horizon. They still hadn’t managed to find any road, and because of that they traveled across rough, uneven ground. The long grasses slowed them and seemed to irritate the horses, but they were still making reasonable time. When they found a roadway, they were all in agreement that they would take it.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Nothing?”
Haern shrugged. “It slopes too much. There’s a pretty considerable hillside, and then beyond that is…” Haern frowned. From there, it looked almost rocky, quite different than the landscape they’d been traveling along.
Was that her concern? It made sense if it was. Then again, he hadn’t expected her to be able to see that.
“Can you make it out?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Not very well. I can tell there’s something there, but…”
“I can go and investigate, if you want.”
Elise looked behind her. “It might be helpful. If we’re heading in the wrong direction and need to change course, it would be nice to know it now.”
Haern hadn’t traveled off on his own since they had gotten the caravan together. Every so often he would fly overhead to try to orient them, but he hadn’t ventured off, partly because he didn’t want to leave the others, and partly because there wasn’t any benefit. There had been no signs of movement to suggest they were in any danger.
“I won’t be long.”
Grabbing for a pocket full of coins, he tossed them out and pushed.
He went quickly, soaring into the sky as rapidly as he could. He didn’t want to be gone from the wagons for long, but now that he had a connection to the lorcith within them, even if he was separated, he’d be able to find them quickly. Then again, if something happened to Haern, the others wouldn’t have the same advantage.
He needed to stay airborne, use that to—
Lorcith streaked toward him.
Having spent the last few days around lorcith, trying to puzzle over the nature of the nails and the spheres, when this one came shooting toward him, he recognized it, even if he didn’t recognize where it came from. It shot up from the ground, almost as if drawn to him.
And maybe it was. Haern had been pulling on lorcith when it came to him.
He dropped, wrapping the sphere in a barrier of his connection, squeezing it tightly. As he did, he forced the nails back inside. If he could prevent it from exploding, he might be able to study it.
It took considerable effort, but he hadn’t been taxing himself all that much by working on the nails. Because of that, he had enough strength to push them back inside, overriding whatever had triggered them in the first place.
When he dropped to the ground, Haern looked around. He didn’t see any sign of an attacker like he would’ve expected.
Why would this sphere be here?
The better question would be how had this sphere gotten here?
He debated whether to take it with him, worried that if he did, it might explode while he was carrying it. Taking it might involve holding on to a connection to the lorcith, forcing it around it in a barrier. One wrong move and it could explode.
He could maintain a barrier around it until he had something he could place it inside. The pots within the wagon would serve for that.
Haern took to the air again. He turned in place, looking around, distantly aware of the wagons. He focused, worried there might be another sphere heading toward him, but he didn’t detect anything there.
Haern made his way northward, moving away from the wagons. As he went, he remained cautious, on edge for the possibility of another attack. He stayed high in the air, much higher than he would otherwise have gone, but by remaining as high as he was, there was the added advantage that he would be equipped to respond quickly.
Nothing else came.
That should have relieved him, and yet it didn’t. He worried he’d overlooked something. Not just that he’d overlooked something, but that there was someone else out there he needed to find.
Haern headed toward the rocky prominence he’d noted when sitting atop the wagon. When he reached it, he discovered that it led toward the shore.
They were heading in the right direction. They could follow the shoreline, make their way north, and from there they could reach Asador.
If they were near the shoreline, how far were they from Elaeavn?
He hadn’t considered returning to his home, other than the few moments he’d contemplated it when he’d seen Galen. Other than that, he’d been focused on making it to Asador, though perhaps that was a mistake. There were other places that would be equally likely to be safe, where they could find branches of the Binders. Rayen had done nothing to disabuse him of the notion of heading to Asador. Either she supported it, or she’d been too dist
racted with what had been taking place to suggest an alternative.
When he reached the water, he hesitated for a moment. He wouldn’t be able to travel over the water the way he could over land. It wouldn’t be possible for him to trigger lorcith into the water and then pull it back out. That was one disadvantage to his method of traveling compared to the Forgers and those who could Slide.
Haern followed the shoreline for a little longer, searching for more lorcith and signs of another possible attack, but came up with nothing.
Turning back toward the wagons, he went quickly. As he did, he focused on the sense of the sphere in his pocket, worried it might explode, but he was able to maintain a connection around it, holding it wrapped in a barrier. As he did, there was another sense, a twitching, as if the lorcith were trying to break free.
He needed to get back to the wagons quickly so that he could place it into one of the pots that would keep it from exploding.
The wagons came into view.
As they did, Haern realized that something was off.
They had stopped.
His heart began to skip. Could they have been under attack? Typically, the wagons continued throughout the day, rarely stopping. It was too much of an ordeal to get them up to speed, and with the casks of water they now had, there wasn’t generally a need to stop.
He didn’t see anything.
That didn’t change his worry, and Haern moved carefully.
As he went, he held on to his connection to the lorcith, squeezing that around the sphere, worried he would release it before he got back to the wagons.
He couldn’t help but feel as if, in his brief absence, something had happened to the others. Could that have been the plan?
No one else would’ve known that he was going to go off.
Whatever happened would be incidental, nothing more than that.
As he neared, he realized what it was.
One of the wagons had a broken axle.
Haern breathed out a sigh of relief. It was a wonder they hadn’t experienced anything similar before. With as rough as the going had been, they’d gotten lucky not having encountered trouble before now.
Haern dropped to the ground, looking for Elise, but didn’t see her anywhere.
He came across Stacy and got her attention. “What happened?”
Stacy waved her hand at the wagon. “We were going along at a rapid clip when that one crashed. We didn’t see anything, and it just stopped going.”
“Is everyone okay?”
“We are, but the wagon is going to be of no use to us.” She had a thick accent that had taken him time to understand.
Haern headed toward the wagon, still looking for Elise. When he reached the broken wagon, he circled around it. The axle appeared shattered, the wheels bent off on either side, but there was something about it that struck him as odd.
It wasn’t just that the axle had been shattered; it was that it had been done with such force.
That was more than just hitting something.
Haern’s breath caught. He dropped to the ground, focusing on lorcith, but came across nothing.
Could there have been another type of explosion?
He got to his feet and looked around.
The wagon would be useless to them. They would have to scrap it, move everyone to another wagon, and continue on. Considering how much the wagons were carrying, that wouldn’t be all that difficult, other than the delay.
“Did you see anything?”
Haern turned to see Elise, suddenly relieved. “There wasn’t anything other than this,” he said, holding out the sphere.
Elise’s eyes widened as she looked at it. “Where did you find that?”
“As I was heading out to see what was ahead of us. It’s nothing but seashore, so I think we’re heading in the right direction,” he said, “but I’m not sure what’s responsible for this.”
“Did you see anyone?”
Haern shook his head. “There wasn’t anyone. It was triggered and drawn toward me, and I think it was only because I was pulling on lorcith that it attacked.”
Elise looked back, turning her attention to the wagon. “What if they were just setting them down, preparing for the possibility someone like you would come along?”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. If there wasn’t anyone there, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. They wouldn’t have known you were there, and even if they did, would they have been able to hide before you could see them?”
“I should have been able to See someone,” he said.
She nodded. “That’s what I thought.”
“I understand the wagon basically exploded?”
Elise frowned, her face wrinkling in as she did. “We hit a massive hole we hadn’t noticed before.”
Haern looked back down to where the wagon was. That was a better explanation than what he had begun to fear. At least it wasn’t anything magical in origin.
“I imagine you’ve already started to make preparations to move people.”
Elise nodded. “It shouldn’t be much longer before we have it taken care of.”
“Then I’m going to take care of this.” He held on to the sphere, still maintaining his barrier around it, and headed toward the lead wagon, pulling open the door.
One of the pots was larger than the others. He placed the sphere inside, carefully replacing the lid, and looked for some rope or twine. He found that at one end of the wagon and looped it around the pot until the lid was fully secured.
Haern breathed out, releasing his connection to lorcith. Holding it like that had been more tiring than he had expected. Gradually, he eased off completely and focused, worried there still might be an explosion, but none came.
When he was done, he debated what to do with the pot. If he left it here, the jostling of the wagon could trigger it, and he didn’t want it to explode in the back of the wagon. If he were working back here, he absolutely didn’t want it triggered. He might be able to suppress it, but he didn’t know if the pot would be able to confine the lorcith.
Without much choice, Haern decided to carry it with him.
Eventually, he would find a place for it, even if it meant carrying it with him on top of the wagon, holding on to his lorcith connection the entire time.
It didn’t take long before Elise had everyone organized, and the caravan began to move onward once more. Haern kept the pot with the sphere tucked alongside him, nervous to let it out of his sight.
Elise took her place next to him on top of the wagon, glancing over in his direction. She frowned as she looked at him. “You look troubled.”
“I’m trying to better understand these lorcith spheres. I can’t really figure out anything about them.”
Whoever had made them had incredible skill with lorcith. And they targeted him. He couldn’t help but feel as if that was what was happening. Somehow, the spheres seemed as if they were finding a way to reach him.
Haern turned away, looking at the pot, tracing his hand around the surface of it. He ignored the metal of the pot itself, focusing on what he could detect within it. The answer was there, though he didn’t know what he’d be able to determine from it. All he could think of was that his father would have known, and that he would have some way of using the metal itself to provide the answers to the mystery of who had made the sphere.
“You said we were close to the shore?”
Haern glanced over. It was good to take his attention away from the metal, to give himself something else to focus on. “We aren’t that far from the shore, and if all goes well, we should be able to reach Asador by following the shoreline.”
“Your homeland is along the shore, isn’t it?”
Haern nodded. “It is, but I don’t know how far we are from it.”
“Were you tempted to return when your people were here?”
“Not as tempted as I thought I would be. I want to see this through.”
“What happens if they won’t
take us in?”
They had been through this before, but he understood Elise’s concern. She was worried they’d need a different plan, but Haern had a strong sense they would have little difficulty getting the women accepted into the Binders.
“They will,” he said.
And what they got to Asador, he didn’t know quite what he would do. With everything else that needed, he couldn’t stay there, and yet, he would need to track down someone who could Slide to carry him away, perhaps back to Elaeavn, or elsewhere. His plan when he got to Asador was to send word to Carth. Hopefully she would have some insight. If not, then Haern wasn’t entirely sure.
“It’s interesting,” Elise said.
“What is?”
“Those explosives.”
“They don’t feel so interesting when they go off.”
“It seems to me that they’re only designed to trigger those who have control over the metal. The ones in the wagon only went off when you were using your control over the metal.”
He’d believed there needed to be someone who triggered them, but maybe that wasn’t the case at all. Maybe there wasn’t someone nearby who was triggering these.
If they would explode without any influence, it made sense they would be triggered by someone who had some control over the metal.
“That wouldn’t be Forgers, then.”
Elise shook her head. “What makes you say that?”
“The Forgers have others who can use the metal.”
And if it wasn’t Forgers, then could it be someone who understood the metal well enough and was working against them?
The idea that others existed out there who were opposed to the Forgers appealed to him. His father had believed it had been up to him and Carth and had prevented others in the city from working with them to push back the threat of the Forgers, but if there were others, could they find them?
And if they found them, would they even be able to help?
“You don’t think the Forgers would target their own people?”
The Coming Chaos Page 39