The Shadowsteel Forge (The Dark Ability Book 5) (7 page)

“
W
hat do
you make of this?” Rsiran asked Jessa, holding the star made of lorcith out to her. They sat together on their bed in the back corner of his smithy, with flames from the hearth crackling steadily. The forge cooled behind them, and the knives that he’d made rested in a line on top of the table, glowing with a soft light. No longer did Rsiran need to light the heartstone lantern he had in the shop, and Jessa didn’t really need the light, either.

She took the star from him and studied it. He’d already done the same using his connection to lorcith, but there might be something her Sight would let her see that his ability didn’t show him. “A decorative star? This is sort of basic for you, but if that’s what you want to make, I won’t be the one to stop you…” Her smile faded when he didn’t return it. “This is what you found in Cort, when the hawker included your grandfather’s medallion in the trade. But what is it? Why is it important?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Jessa punched him in the shoulder, and he winced. “That’s for going to Cort without me. You saw what Thyr was like.”

“Cort wasn’t anything like that.”

“Not in the part you were. But I’ve been there. I know what it’s like once you leave the city. You’re still a babe when it comes to that kind of experience.”

“It’s been years since you were in Cort.”

She shrugged. “It doesn’t change what those places are like. I told you what they wanted me for there.”

“You haven’t.”

She pulled her knees into her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. “Well, I don’t think I need to tell you anything more than what I have. Just know that it was awful.”

Rsiran draped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close to him. “I know that it was. And I’m sorry that you had to go through it.”

She relaxed against him and didn’t say anything for a while. “Who do you think you were chasing?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Someone able to Slide carrying lorcith.”

“Valn?”

Rsiran wasn’t sure. There was an easy way to find out, but that meant returning to the Alchemist Guild, and he hadn’t decided whether he wanted to do that yet. “Maybe.”

“There aren’t any others in Elaeavn able to Slide.”

“Not here,” he said.

Jessa sighed. “You think the Forgotten?”

He shrugged. “I don’t really know. But it’s possible that it was the Forgotten. We know we stopped Evaelyn, and the others who were with her, but we don’t know about the rest.”

Jessa pushed away from him. “Like your grandfather.”

Rsiran nodded. “Yes, my mother’s father. And Brusus’s mother. We haven’t found her yet, either.”

“Maybe they weren’t with the rest of the Elvraeth Forgotten,” Jessa suggested.

Rsiran sighed. “I remember something that Della said to me once when we were talking about the Forgotten. She mentioned that when the Elvraeth were exiled it was hard on them. They were accustomed to power. But I think they were accustomed to something else as well. The structure of the palace. Think of what we know about the Elvraeth in the Floating Palace. They fight and argue for position. But there’s a council that rules over everything. What if the exiles had formed a similar structure?”

Jessa bit her lip. “If so, then what we thought was the end of the Forgotten might not be the end at all. Maybe they are establishing their new leadership structure as we speak?”

He nodded.

“There’s another possibility,” Jessa said.

“What’s that?”

“What if there was a second group of Elvraeth exiles? They might not have agreed with Evaelyn. It’s possible that they formed a second group.”

Rsiran turned to the fire and stared at it. From what Della had said, wouldn’t Danis have been with Evaelyn? Unless he controlled another faction of the Forgotten. They needed to be certain that the rest of the Elvraeth exiles weren’t going to make a play for Elaeavn, but would the guild think the Forgotten any sort of threat, when they were so focused on Venass?

“If there’s a second group, then we’ll need to know that too,” he said.

“You want to go back to the Forgotten Palace,” Jessa noted.

It was as if she almost beat him to the decision he’d just made in his mind. If he didn’t go back to the Forgotten Palace, he would never know what else they might have hidden. He knew that members of the Alchemist Guild had returned to the Forgotten Palace after he’d killed Evaelyn, but not what they had found.

“I think we need to return.”

Jessa stood and took his hand. “Then let’s go.”

“Now?”

She threatened to punch him again. “If we don’t, I think you’ll probably try to return sometime without me, so, yes, now.”

The Slide took them from his smithy all the way to the Forgotten Palace. He fixed on the distant sense of heartstone as he Slid, using it to both anchor and to
pull
himself forward.

When they emerged, he immediately detected the sickly sweet scent of heartstone. Evaelyn had surrounded herself with heartstone, as if she intended to use it to protect herself. And with any other Slider, she would have been able to do so. With Rsiran, that protection failed her.

“I know you wanted to see if the Forgotten continue to gather, but I’m not sure that coming to their stronghold is the right way to do it,” Jessa said.

She held tightly to his hand, ready for him to Slide them to safety if needed. A long-bladed knife was in her other hand. The modified bracelets on her wrists—now with heartstone mixed in—glowed with a soft blue light.

“After what Della said, I have to wonder if there is more for us to fear from the Forgotten, even with Evaelyn gone. She might have controlled these Forgotten, and made the alliance with Venass, but if her brother Danis—my grandfather—still lives, then why wouldn’t he control a faction of the Forgotten as well?”

“That’s what worries me. This time it’s
your
family that we’re talking about.” When he frowned, she went on. “I know you, Rsiran. I know how you feel about your family, and that you think you can save everyone. Even your father. You’re willing to help him, and risked your life to save him, because of that connection. And I get it. I want those connections as well. I’d give anything to have
my
family back, but some people can’t be redeemed.”

“I’m not going to risk you to understand what happened with my grandparents,” he said.

“That’s not what I’m afraid of. I worry that you’ll risk yourself to find out what happened.”

He looked away, not wanting her to see the anxiety on his face. She didn’t need to be a Reader with him. With her Sight, she was able to pick up subtle changes to his expressions, and had shown time and again how she could do it. With this, she was right. He wanted to understand, and needed answers.

“The bodies are gone,” he said.

Jessa pulled him around to look at her. “Promise me that you’ll not do anything stupid.”

He forced a smile, knowing that she could tell. “I promise I won’t do anything stupid.”

She studied him a moment before shaking her head. “I wish I could believe you.” She turned away and surveyed the room. “Yeah, no bodies, and no traces of blood. The place has been cleaned.”

“That would seem to confirm that the Forgotten remain intact,” Rsiran said.

“Maybe. Or it could be a few of them, those who were left in the palace, who took the bodies away.”

Another thought came to him, one that troubled him more than the possibility of the Forgotten remaining intact. With them, he at least understood their abilities, and had some idea of how to counter them. What if the alliance with Venass had gone deeper than he realized? He didn’t know enough about what the scholars were capable of doing. They had already demonstrated a unique knowledge of how to replicate the abilities of the Great Watcher. He had nearly died when attacked by Forgotten who had only recently acquired an ability to control lorcith. What would happen when he encountered some who had been using it for years?

They stopped at one of the shelves stacked with books. These were important to Evaelyn and the Forgotten for some reason. Important enough that they would conceal them in this room. But it wasn’t the books that he wanted to understand. There had to be other items here, much like the solid rod of heartstone that Evaelyn had possessed.

“See anything?” he asked Jessa.

“Nothing that jumps out at me. What are you expecting to find?”

He didn’t really know. Maybe something that would explain the Forgotten’s relationship with Venass, or maybe something that would tell him more about how long they had been organized here. Anything.

But even that wasn’t really necessary. Not now that he knew that others had been here. That had been the real reason that they’d come, and maybe to understand … what? Why the Forgotten had been willing to work with Venass? He understood their desire for power, and the longing to regain control of Elaeavn.

“Come on,” Jessa said. “We should look through the rest of the palace.”

“Are you sure?”

She shook her head. “Not sure, but I know you’re curious, so come on.”

They started toward the door before Rsiran stopped and turned. They had been through that door before. On the other side, the palace went up several floors, as well as down. But there was another door, one that Evaelyn had come through.

He focused on searching for the other door. It was hidden, concealed in the wall, but using his ability to sense the heartstone, he was able to find the cracks in the wall, and probed for a way to open it.

“There’s a handle,” Jessa said.

She reached for a part of the wall that seemed nothing more than solid metal, and grabbed onto a handle that suddenly materialized for him. It had been obscured in the steady blue glow from the walls.

The door opened into darkness, at least for him. That meant no lorcith, and no heartstone. Rsiran hated the dark, and unsheathed his sword, holding it out as he made his way forward.

“That looks strange,” Jessa said.

He glanced over to her and smiled. “Not scary?”

She chuckled. “Not the way you hold it. You look like you’re using it as a torch.”

He shrugged. That was pretty much how he did use it. “Maybe it will keep us from getting attacked if anyone attempts to jump us.”

“I think if anyone appears, you’ll be better off
pushing
your sword at them. Even throwing it.”

“Haern has been working with me...”

“Yeah, and that’s your problem. Haern doesn’t know what he’s doing any more than you do. You’d be better off going to Neeland and training. At least there, you’d know that you were learning something useful.”

He chuckled softly. The idea of going to Neeland to train was about as ridiculous as anything else that he’d done. “Maybe then, I could learn about their poisons and keep Brusus from getting poisoned again.”

“I didn’t say you should become a sellsword,” she said as they reached the end of a corridor. Blank stone walls rose around them, and he hadn’t seen anything that looked like a door or a way out from this corridor. But this
had
been where he’d seen Evaelyn come from, as well as Inna and the other Forgotten. Something was back here.

“Do you see anything?” he asked Jessa.

“Thought maybe your lorcith sensing might pick up something. I don’t see anything here but shades of gray.”

That meant that without the sword, the hall would be pitch black. Jessa saw only grays when the darkness was that absolute. With the sword, he was able to see the walls and everything around him. “Well, my sword isn’t so strange, after all,” he said. “Because I can see more than you this time. Now who’s the babe?”

She flashed him a grin and started pushing on the stone until it clicked. “I didn’t say that I could see nothing, And you’re still the babe in the dark, but that’s okay. That’s why you have me.”

A door swung open, and heartstone interspersed with lorcith lined the walls. Somehow, he hadn’t detected it even though it was only on the other side of the wall. Now that the door was open, though, he had full awareness of both.

“Tell me you see this,” he said.

“I see it. Don’t know what it means.”

Rsiran didn’t, either, but the way the two metals alternated created a pattern, and that pattern
pushed
against him. Whatever else this did, it seemed designed to work against his lorcith abilities, and possibly even to counter his ability to Slide.

They reached the end of a hall. “Look at this,” Jessa commented.

Rsiran swung the sword around to light his way and saw what she was pointing to. There was the outline of a door, with a small loop of metal for a handle. The door appeared to be set into the lorcith and heartstone pattern so that the opening created a zigzagging pattern. The entire section of the wall
pushed
against him.

“There’s something here,” he said. “Or there was.”

“Let me see if I can open it.” Jessa pulled out her lock-pick set and began working at the lock that he had barely noticed. The more he focused on the lorcith, the more the heartstone began to pulse at him. When he shifted to the heartstone, then the lorcith began to pulse against him. They countered each other, a painful balance that forced his focus away so that he could barely keep his mind focused. Standing here, he would struggle to Slide, and he would struggle to detect either lorcith or heartstone distant from him.

“This is a prison,” he said softly.

Jessa turned to him and frowned. “What? Why would they have a prison
here
? We’ve already seen the kind of prison the Forgotten uses. This isn’t one of them.”

“This is meant for me.” That was the only explanation he could think of. They had learned enough about his abilities that the Forgotten had come up with a way to counter them. And unlike what Venass had used on him, this might work.

Had Evaelyn shared this with Venass?

“Rsiran, they wouldn’t have had the time to create something this elaborate in the time between when they discovered us and when we returned.”

He didn’t know if that was really true. This wasn’t necessarily complex, more of a regular pattern that served to
push
against him. “Let’s see if there’s anything on the other side.”