Blood of the Watcher (The Dark Ability Book 4) (28 page)

“What are you saying?” Sarah asked.

Eldon shook his head. “You think I don’t know that I shouldn’t be doing this? You think that I would if there were any other choice? If I’m gone, they’ll… they’ll…” He sobbed, unable to finish his thoughts. “They’ve already shown me what they will do.” He turned toward Rsiran, somehow picking him out in the darkness. “Take me back. I haven’t been gone long enough for them to notice…”

As he trailed off, his eyes went wide. “Oh, Great Watcher,” Eldon said.

“What is it?” Brusus asked.

“They know I’m gone.”

“How can you tell?” Haern asked.

Rsiran didn’t need Eldon to answer. He could
feel
it, like a change in the way the mine felt around him. The air cooled, and the strange song of the lorcith shifted, as if in warning. For Eldon to know, that meant that he heard it, and more than that, he
listened
.

“How many are there?” Rsiran asked.

Eldon shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. They have taken my family, everyone I care about. That’s how they get others to work for them. If I don’t…”

Rsiran knew without him finishing what would happen. He’d seen that darkness from the Forgotten before, but for them to torment entire families, for them to tear those families apart—families that from what he could see of Eldon, wanted to be together—told him all that he needed of the Forgotten.

“Come on,” Rsiran said to the others, holding his arms out.

“Rsiran?” Brusus said. “What are you doing?”

“We’re going to end this.” One way or another, Rsiran was determined to stop the Forgotten. They would not continue to tear families apart. It had been bad enough when his father had been forced to work with the Forgotten. If what his mother had said was true, his father had done what he did to protect his family.

Now they were using other families? Now they would attempt to destroy all the smiths?

Not if Rsiran could help it.

“Rsiran?” Eldon said, stepping toward him. “You’re Lareth’s boy?”

“Why?”

Eldon reached for him, but Rsiran shook him off. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said. “You’re the one they
want
to be here.”

Rsiran felt anger surging through him. “That’s their mistake.”

He held his arms out, and Brusus and Haern latched on. Sarah took a moment, and then took his hand.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“The palace.”

R
siran focused
on what he remembered of the Forgotten Palace. He had only been there once, but the memory of it was locked in his mind. He needed only to think of it, and he could find it.

But he had more than that. With the heartstone that he knew was there, he could anchor to the palace, and he
pulled
himself to the room where he’d first met Evaelyn.

When he emerged, the room had a soft blue glow to it that reminded him of the Hall of Guilds.

“Where are we?” Brusus asked.

“I don’t know what they call it, but I call it the Forgotten Palace,” he answered.

Haern sucked in a breath. “Cold.”

As he did, Rsiran felt the bracelets on his wrists go cold as well. “They know we’re here,” he whispered. “Be ready,” he said to Brusus.

He glanced at Sarah. He hadn’t thought about providing protection for her and wondered if Evaelyn or someone with her would Compel Sarah. If they did, Rsiran wouldn’t have the same hesitation that he had with Haern or Jessa to do what he needed to keep the rest of them safe.

A door opened at one end of the room. Evaelyn led a group of five others with her. Rsiran noted that Inna was among them. Inna smiled knowingly at him.

“Great Watcher,” Brusus whispered, “she looks like Della!”

“Yeah, they’re sisters,” Rsiran said. “She didn’t tell you?”

“There’s much that Della doesn’t tell me,” Brusus said.

“You shouldn’t have returned,” Evaelyn said. “I allowed you to leave the last time. You will not find me as accommodating this time.”

Haern dropped to the ground. He clawed at the bracelets on his wrists, trying to pry them off. “They burn!” he moaned.

“Leave them on,” Rsiran urged.

“I
feel
her reaching into my mind!” Haern said.

“Let her reach,” Rsiran answered. “So long as she doesn’t control.”

“Control? You think that I can’t learn as well?” Evaelyn asked. “When you made the mistake of coming here again, I decided it was time to act.”

She stalked toward them, but Rsiran stood his ground. He sent the knives in his pockets out and let them hover in the air, and held them in place. “Not any closer. We will have a talk, you and I.”

Evaelyn’s gaze shifted to the knives and she smiled. “That is how you would like to do this? You think violence and your control over lorcith grants you anything?” She smiled, and an anxious feeling settled through him. “I have learned your limitations, Rsiran Lareth.”

Rsiran realized that he might have made a mistake. He thought that Inna had pulled Jessa away as a distraction, something that would buy them time to move the smiths, but he’d been wrong. They had used Jessa to draw him here.

He had done what they wanted.

He glanced at Sarah who stared at Evaelyn. Her eyes flared a deep green that matched Brusus’s. Any fear Rsiran had that she would be Compelled eased when he saw that. Brusus winced, his face screwing into tight concentration, but he remained standing.

“You think I have maintained my position this long without learning when compromise is needed?” Evaelyn asked.

With dawning horror, Rsiran felt the knives he held in the air begin to spin.

He reached for lorcith and realized that the five people with Evaelyn all had lorcith piercing them. They could control lorcith.

The knives
pushed
against him. Rsiran
pushed
back, but they outnumbered him.

“Venass?” he asked. “You’ve partnered with Venass?”

Evaelyn smiled then. “Partnership is a strong word,” she said. “This is more an exchange of knowledge.”

Inna and two others stepped forward. The knives pressed even more.

“Release your knives and you may yet live,” Inna said.

“Why the smiths?” Rsiran asked Evaelyn. If he had to run, if he had to Slide from here, he would have answers first.

Evaelyn looked past Rsiran to Sarah. “You haven’t told him?” Her smile deepened. “Interesting. And here I thought that the alchemists cared about purity.”

Sarah took a step forward. “I am not of the alchemists,” she spat, and threw something.

Light exploded at Evaelyn’s feet.

“What are you doing?” Rsiran yelled. He managed to maintain control of the knives, but only barely. The sudden explosion had startled him, and he’d regained control, but almost not quickly enough. The knife nearest him
pushed
forward.

If he Slid, he risked losing control of the knives altogether.

Another door opened in a surge, and six more Forgotten spilled into the room.

“Damn,” Haern muttered and streaked toward the new arrivals. Brusus raced after Haern.

“They were coming. I detected the travel,” Sarah said.

“Help them,” Rsiran told her.

Her eyes drifted to the knives. “And what about you?”

“These are mine,” he answered through gritted teeth. “And they will not be used against me.”

He turned back to face Evaelyn. She stood, watching him with amusement, as the five Forgotten attempted to surround him. Behind him, he heard the sound of metal on metal as his friends engaged the newcomers.

“Soon I will reach into your mind and take what I need,” Evaelyn said.

Rsiran focused on lorcith, pushing against the knives.
He
had forged them. The connection was to him, not these Forgotten.

He reached through the lorcith, recognizing the quiet song that had helped him forge them, and felt the knives respond to him.

Rsiran
pushed
.

The knives moved.

Two of the men nearest jerked their heads back, as if startled.

Rsiran used that moment to
push
on the knives and sent them sinking into their necks.

As they fell, another three came racing into the room. Attuned to lorcith as he was, he detected their piercings immediately.

They pulled weapons of their own from their pockets and threw them into the air.

Rsiran shifted his attention and
pushed
against them. He hadn’t forged them, and his connection to them was not the same.

Lorcith pressed near him. He could feel the onslaught all around him.

Someone cried out behind him. Brusus? Haern?

He needed to gain control of his knives.

Haern had thought that he might have learned enough to keep them safe, but he hadn’t expected the Forgotten to have sided with Venass, and he hadn’t expected them to learn to control lorcith.

He
pushed
against the attack, but he was not strong enough.

If he Slid, there was no guarantee that he could Slide fast enough to escape the attack. And his friends would be forced to face those who now controlled lorcith.

No, he needed another solution, but what?

Through it all, he felt Evaelyn’s eyes on him and saw the dark smile on her face.

Lorcith was his! The connection was his, not borrowed, not stolen, and not faked.

He could hear the song, could feel the ore within Ilphaesn, and knew the weight of it within the mountain. Weight that he’d used before.

Rsiran inhaled, drawing on the distant sense of lorcith, that from Ilphaesn, and
pushed
. Pain shot through his head in a way that reminded him of when he’d first begun to detect heartstone.

As it receded, he
pushed
with the weight of all the lorcith that he could.

The knives and the strange weapons the other Forgotten tossed at him slowly shifted.

One of the Forgotten gasped. Rsiran reached deeper, drawing on the connection with even more strength, and
pushed
.

He did not
push
blindly. Rsiran focused his efforts, using the ties to Ilphaesn, and the sense of the lorcith, to guide his attack.

Weapons streaked from him, racing toward the Forgotten.

All but one struck true.

Inna escaped. He saw her Slide as a flash of color, but also sensed it, a prickly sensation along his skin. She emerged a step away from him.

“You should not have been able—” she started.

He didn’t let her finish. Using the connection to Ilphaesn, Rsiran
pulled
on the lorcith knives,
pulled
on the strange weapons the Forgotten had used, and sent them at Inna.

Her eyes widened, and she Slid, again avoiding attack.

Rsiran
pulled
on the lorcith and sent everything he sensed near him, even weapons Inna carried, slamming into the wall until they were buried in the heartstone.

At first, Inna was dragged with them, but then she flicked the lorcith free and Slid. She emerged near Evaelyn.

Rsiran wanted to turn. He wanted to see how his friends in the attack behind him fared, but he didn’t dare risk it. Not with Inna still standing, and not with Evaelyn watching him. The darkness in her eyes frightened him, as did the sense he had that she might somehow manage to crawl beyond the barriers created by the bracelets. He could fortify them with his own mental barriers, but he lost something when he did, there was a weakened connection to the metal then.

“How many more do you think you can stop, Rsiran Lareth? How many until you grow tired?” Evaelyn asked, her lips pulling into a tight smile. “I can see it now. You begin to grow fatigued, the effort of the fight wearing on you. You were never trained for this. Fighting does not come naturally for you, not as it does to the exiles.”

“The Forgotten,” Rsiran said. “Call yourselves exiles all you want, but you, Evaelyn, should be Forgotten.”

Rsiran realized that he could sense both lorcith and heartstone at the same time. Never before had he been able to detect both at once.

A flash of color from Inna told him that she began to Slide.

Rsiran
pulled
on the heartstone pin in Evaelyn’s hair, grasping onto it tightly as he
pulled
it to him. The sense of the metal was slippery, but he clung to it, drawing it to him.

The bar of heartstone reached him at the same time as Inna emerged from her Slide, holding an unsheathed steel sword.

She smiled and swung it toward Rsiran.

Drawing on the sense of heartstone all around him, he
pushed
. The bar streaked toward Inna. She attempted to Slide, but Rsiran had timed his attack, and she wasn’t fast enough.

It struck her in the chest, flying completely through her.

Once Rsiran would have felt remorse or horror or revulsion. He felt nothing for Inna. She had been willing to poison him for the information she wanted, and had attacked Jessa to get to him. A woman like that deserved no sympathy.

He stepped toward Evaelyn.

She eyed him with dark hatred. “You have made a mistake, Rsiran Lareth, if you think your barriers can withstand me. I’ve forgotten more about my abilities than you will ever learn. The Great Watcher smiled on us when Venass couldn’t contain you as they promised they would in Thyr. When I suggested that
we
could draw you here, and that we would share our knowledge if they shared theirs…” She glanced at Inna. “A costly trade, but you are the price for knowledge. With this, we will finally be able to return. The guilds will fall under our rule.”

Rsiran looked at the fallen Forgotten all around him. “I’m the price of what you learned? And you think learning how to control lorcith was worth it? How many did you sacrifice for this? How many will suffer for what you want?”

His bracelets began to cool. “As many as it takes for victory,” she said.

Cool turned cold, and the bracelets flashed a bright blue and burned painfully. It lasted only a moment, long enough for Rsiran to feel Evaelyn attempting to reach his mind, and then he slammed his barriers into place on top, augmenting the bracelets.

Evaelyn staggered and fell, a piercing scream echoing from her.

He glanced back, and saw Brusus and Haern still standing. Seven Forgotten lay on the ground around them. Sarah held her hand over a gash on her arm, but she managed to stand.

Satisfied that they were safe, Rsiran knelt in front of Evaelyn. “You are mistaken if you think I haven’t learned anything in our time since we met.”

She looked up at him and managed to smile. “You are weak. All of your kind is weak. And you were never meant to rule.”

He noted that she looked past him. Sarah stood behind him, watching Evaelyn with disgust. “What do we do with her?” Rsiran asked.

Sarah’s eyes widened suddenly, and she grabbed her head. She brought her sword up, swinging it toward Rsiran.

Without needing to stand, he pulled himself to the side in a Slide. “You should have known you were beaten,” Rsiran said to Evaelyn sadly.

“I’ll never be beaten. So long as I live—”

He
pulled
on the heartstone pin that had gone through Inna, and slammed it into Evaelyn. He looked away in disgust as it crushed her throat.

Sarah sagged. Brusus reached her and placed his hands on either side of her head. Within a moment, what Evaelyn had done to Compel her faded, and she blinked her eyes open again.

“Thank you,” she said to Rsiran.

“Why?”

“You could have simply killed me when she took hold of my mind.”

Rsiran glanced over at Brusus and then Haern. “That’s not how I do things. I help my friends.”

“We’re friends now?” she asked.

Rsiran stood. “When I first learned you chased me, I thought you were like them,” he said. His gaze swept around him, at all the dead. He sighed. So many had died because of Evaelyn’s thirst for power. He feared that many more would have to until the Forgotten were completely stopped, but this was a start. Without Evaelyn and Inna, they wouldn’t have their leader.

It was one less threat for him to worry about.

Now, he only needed to focus on Venass.

“You proved you weren’t, but you and Ephram have still kept things from me. Friends can’t keep secrets that put the others at risk.” He glanced over at Brusus, who flushed slightly. “I think it’s time that I have answers. Real answers.”

Sarah met his gaze and nodded.