They continued through the forest, and it wasn’t long before they encountered three more golems, which Imogen cut down. Now that she knew to use the sacred patterns, it was an easier task.
Benji paused, closing his eyes as he lowered himself to the ground. The Porapeth crouched between trees, rested on the ground the way he often did, and moved his arms in a steady swirling pattern. A faint tremble came with the movement, one that Imogen detected through her boots and seemed to echo in her bones. There were times when she thought she could almost understand what Benji tried to hear when he spoke to the earth, or when he tapped on the trees as they passed through the forest, or even when the wind howled as he waved his hands in strange patterns. Most of the time, she thought the Porapeth slightly mad.
“Is it telling you anything?” Imogen asked.
“If you listen, you could hear.”
“You keep telling me that, but I’m not a Porapeth—something else you keep telling me.”
She leaned against a tree and looked around the dark forest. The air was slightly humid, but a chill hung over everything. A hint of fog obscured the bases of the trees. Imogen tried to ignore how tired and hungry she felt. She wanted nothing more than a warm bed.
“I tell you that you’re not a Porapeth, but I also tell you that you could hear, if only you are willing to listen.”
“What is it saying?” she asked.
“It is saying we need to keep going east.”
He got to his feet and weaved through the trees, heading away from Imogen. She glanced at the ground where he had traced his pattern, but didn’t see anything. Not that she expected to see anything from the way Benji lovingly caressed a pattern on the ground. He had a unique and odd kind of magic, especially compared to what she thought she could understand.
There was no sign that anyone had come through this part of the forest. They were in a relatively unpopulated part of the world. To the north would be the marshlands, though she suspected it was a week or more by foot to reach them. They hadn’t encountered many villages, only a few in the time they had been traveling. Still, she stayed with Benji.
Or rather, he stayed with her.
She caught up to him. “Have you detected anything from him?”
He held her gaze for a moment, the silver in his eyes swirling the way it did from time to time. “The forest doesn’t like to speak of such things.”
“What about the ground? Or the wind?”
There was a time when such questions would have sounded ridiculous to Imogen, but after traveling with Benji for as long as she had, she no longer felt that way. Perhaps a little ridiculous, though less now than she once had.
“The ground doesn’t like to talk of such things either. The wind, on the other hand, can be a bit of a fickle shit. She doesn’t always care what she speaks of.” Benji chuckled and waved his hands again, twirling them through the air.
“So have you detected anything?”
“East,” he said again.
“I get that. We’ve been traveling east for…”
Imogen thought about how long they had been journeying. Since defeating the Sul’toral, she had been chasing after her brother for weeks. Weeks where Benji had searched for any sign of Timo, but he had not had any success. She had followed Benji, having no other way to track her brother, and it was difficult even with his help. Timo seemed to have disappeared completely. The trees didn’t speak of him, and the earth rarely gave them any answers. It was only the wind—“fickle” as Benji had constantly commented—that shared anything about what had happened, but even that hadn’t provided them with any way to catch Timo. He had proven elusive.
Still, Imogen was determined to find him.
Benji zigzagged through the trees and continued to dance as he did, as if he would find something through his movements that he wouldn’t be able to otherwise. Imogen looked for signs that anyone else had passed through this area but did not find any. She had a hard time knowing what to look for—after all, she wasn’t a hunter. That wasn’t how her people were trained. They didn’t learn to chase power but instead learned to fight sorcerers. Nothing more than that.
Benji moved quietly, pausing from time to time to knock on one tree or another, trace his hands through the air, or tap on the ground, as though he might learn something through the earth itself.
“Not much farther to go today,” Benji said as they stopped near a stream.
Imogen refilled her waterskin. In the forest, there was plenty of opportunity to do so. The water was mostly clear, though even when it wasn’t, all it took was Benji’s touch for his magic to purify the water. He had ways of gathering fruits and edible leaves, even a few roots that he wanted her to sample. At one point, she’d asked about trying to catch a rabbit or a squirrel or any of the creatures that lived in the forest, but Benji had seemed offended by the idea.
“Timo is up there?” she asked.
Benji danced from one foot to another. “I don’t know. I can’t tell. What can you tell?”
She shook her head. “I told you I can’t find anything.”
He traced the pattern in the air again, cocking his head to the side and breathing in deeply. His silver eyes seemed darker for just a moment. “If only I could see…”
It wasn’t the first time he had made a comment like that, and Imogen had stopped asking what he meant. Porapeth had a particular kind of magic, but one of their abilities permitted them to see into the future—or possible futures, such as it were. He hadn’t told her much more about it, but she understood that was how it worked. Yet for all that magic, it hadn’t helped them at all. It was almost as if he couldn’t see anything. Nothing useful, at least.
He hurried off, saying nothing as he disappeared into the trees, and once again Imogen watched him and shook her head before trailing after him. She found him standing near the entrance to what looked like a cave built out of heaped earth, moss-covered stone, and vines.
“Here?” she asked.
“He wouldn’t have come here.” Benji’s voice was soft, a tight whisper.
“Why not? What is this?”
He shook his head again and pressed his hand outward like he wanted to touch the stones themselves, then withdrew it.
“Benji?”
“I must go inside.”
“Why?”
“This is a place of ancient power. A stronghold.”
Imogen regarded the small opening in the rock of the hillside. “It doesn’t look like anything but a cave.”
“A cave, but one that led to power, at least once upon a time.” His silver eyes flashed again, as they often did these days, and he seemed bothered by his inability to see more.
“Let me go with you.”
He glanced at her, his gaze drifting down to her sword. “Are you sure you can?”
She chuckled. “You don’t think I can go into a cave?”
“The last time we did, we faced adlet.”
“Is that what you think we’re going to find now?” Imogen asked, turning toward the opening.
“No. I should think not, but there is the possibility that something is here.”
He traced his hands in another pattern, moving them with an unnatural steadiness. As Imogen watched, she wondered what he might be able to uncover. Benji didn’t say anything. He started forward, and it seemed as if the stone rippled when he passed beneath it.
Imogen hesitated, then unsheathed her sword. She felt foolish going in with her blade out, but she would feel a whole lot more foolish if she were attacked and didn’t have it at the ready.
The stone didn’t ripple the same way when she moved past it into the dark cave. The air had a musty odor to it, though there was also a hint of something else. Old. Ancient. Her skin tingled, and the farther she went, the more she detected it. She knew it had to be magic, but she was still surprised by it.
She hurried and caught up to Benji. “You said this was an ancient place of power?”
“Very ancient,�
�� he said, his voice barely more than a whisper. “And very powerful.”
The walls glowed faintly, and at first she thought it was the walls themselves, but she soon realized that the glow was coming from Benji and his particular form of magic.
“What is it?” she asked.
“A crypt.”
Imogen stopped mid-step. Could that be the smell she detected? Death? “Then we should leave.”
“It is not a crypt as your people call it,” Benji said.
Imogen licked her lips, then breathed in deeply, immediately wishing she hadn’t. The stench suggested there was something awful here. Or there once had been.
“What are you expecting to find?” she asked as she followed him.
“I expect to find nothing. At least, I should hope so.”
He moved forward, tapping on the ground as he went. Imogen had gotten used to the way he tapped on things as he maneuvered, so she wasn’t surprised to see it, but it was intriguing nonetheless. What did he hope to uncover in speaking to the earth?
The tunnel opened up before them, and they found themselves in a large chamber—a vault of some kind. All around were doors made out of cracked and faded stone. The air was dense, a little heavier than it had been before. She looked at the doors, noting that they had symbols etched into them.
“What is this place?”
“This is the crypt,” Benji said.
“And this is what you expected to find?”
“I wanted to ensure that it was intact. There are some secrets here that should not be disturbed.”
He pressed down on the ground, and she had a sense that he was using his power to do something, but she couldn’t tell with any certainty. When he finally straightened, he swept his gaze around before settling on her.
“And?” she said when he didn’t speak.
“There is something amiss… only I can’t see what it is. The last time I saw this place was many years ago.”
He made his way through the crypt, whispering softly. Was he talking to himself, or was he whispering to the wind or the stone the way he often did? She couldn’t tell.
“Benji?”
“Can you feel it, First?”
Her brow furrowed. “I don’t feel anything.”
“There is… something. What did that fucker do?” he muttered.
“Who? Timo?”
“The trail we’ve followed leads us here. I can’t say with certainty, but I fear he came through here. What I don’t know is why.”
The sudden change in his tone was jarring, but he turned, marched straight along the tunnel, and then out. The glowing in the chamber faded the moment he walked away.
Imogen hurried after him as he left the crypt, and when she reached the archway leading into the wider chamber, she paused and looked back.
Why would Timo have come this direction?
And what secrets did this crypt hold?
Chapter Three
The movement along the stream caught Imogen’s attention. She studied it, watching the turbulent flow of water, all too aware that some aspect of it seemed filled with a power she did not fully understand. As she stared at the water, feeling its energy, she couldn’t help but question whether Benji had brought her here to show her the stream, or if there was some other reason behind it.
Ever since coming upon that crypt, Benji had been quiet. He was crouched in front of the stream, tracing his hands through the water as if he could detect something.
“What does the water tell you?” She glanced to him, then looked along stream. It stretched into the forest but ventured north eventually, and she caught a glimpse of the outskirts of a nearby village.
“The water tells me quite a bit, but you have to be willing to listen.” He peered up at her, his eyes twinkling as they often did. “Are you willing to do that, First of the Blade?”
She laughed softly to herself, expecting there to be more to his comment, but he didn’t share anything else. Instead, he kept his focus on the water.
“None of this is going to help us find Timo,” she said. “I thought you were on board with searching for him. Given what he has done—”
“And what has he done?”
Her jaw dropped open slightly at the comment. “You mean other than trying to kill you so that he could take your power and become a Toral? And whatever he’d done in the crypt?” She still hadn’t learned what Benji worried about there.
Everything seemed tied to Timo and his search for the power he needed so he could become a Sul’toral, something that would be far more difficult to obtain and far more difficult to become. It was why he had needed Benji, wanting to steal his power to use it for his own purposes.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that. You look like I just took a shit in your breakfast.” He nodded, looking into the distance. “There has to be something up ahead. There’s a village, though the stream tells me that people have been moving through, so I’m not exactly sure if we will find anything there.”
“What is it telling you?”
“It’s telling me that people have been moving through here. Aren’t you listening?”
Imogen frowned at him. This was the cantankerous Benji she had first encountered, injured and near death along the road. She thought he had recovered, at least somewhat. Now it seemed that some residual darkness might have lingered, making her question if he was tormented by what had happened to him.
Or perhaps it was something he had seen in the crypt.
That had been the bigger change.
Benji didn’t talk about it, though increasingly Imogen thought he needed to. There was something there that had bothered him.
“You aren’t telling me something,” she said. “If you’re going to travel with me—”
“Who said I was traveling with you and that it isn’t the other way around?”
She shrugged. “I’m looking for my brother. Are you?”
“Seeing as how he tried to kill me, I think I should.”
“And seeing as how you have made it clear that you don’t care what he did, I wasn’t sure what you would do.”
He smiled slightly, though it seemed forced. “That crypt was a place that I knew long ago. It had been closed for many years, so the fact that it’s now open is worrisome.”
“How many years?”
“Enough years that I don’t want to talk about it. How does that sound to you?”
“You don’t need to get snippy with me. I’m trying to understand so that I can help.”
Benji inhaled deeply, and the silver in his eyes flared more brightly than it had before. He breathed out, and she detected the frustration he carried with him. “Many beings of power have been interred there. I don’t know what your brother was after, but it poses a danger, whatever it was. That is my concern.”
“Was that so hard to tell me?”
“It wasn’t, but I don’t know what might have happened there.”
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t see it,” Benji snapped.
The suddenness of his comment—and the implications it carried—caught her off guard.
He couldn’t see it. For anyone else, that would be a simple statement, but as a Porapeth who could see possible futures, Benji’s admission was far more significant. What did that mean that he couldn’t see it? Did something obscure it? Was it something her brother had done? Or was it her?
“You told me once that you weren’t able to see things around me for some reason,” Imogen said.
Benji nodded and crouched down again, running his hand across the surface of the rippling water. “I have had difficulty. I thought it was your brother, but perhaps it was not.” He motioned for them to keep moving, and he made his way along the stream. He moved quickly, though he did so with an easy speed that seemed as if he were not hurrying. “I haven’t been able to find any possible futures that mean anything to me here. I suspect it is your brother, but I can’t prove it either. That is what worries me.”
<
br /> “That’s all you had to say,” she said.
“It’s not all I had to say. There are other aspects to it that are troublesome, ones that leave me questioning what your brother might be doing. But more than that, I wonder how he has managed to obscure what he is doing.”
Imogen shook her head, but Benji continued. “I should have been able to detect what his plan was before. I blame the Sul’toral, but with him gone, the question remains as to how he has managed to keep his intentions from me.” His eyes went distant, and the silver in them flared brightly like it often did when he was deep in thought. “Whatever he is after is tied to a different sort of magic. Perhaps he’s chasing the Sul’toral power again, or perhaps it’s a different connection that he seeks.”
They followed the flow of the stream, but a sudden tension along her skin made Imogen stop and spin around. As she looked, she half expected to come across magic, whether an enchantment or perhaps some dark creature, but there was nothing. She glanced over to Benji, who wore a deep frown.
“You felt it as well,” she said.
“Of course I felt it. Do you think I can’t detect these things?”
“I didn’t say that. I was just saying—”
“I know what you were just saying. You were trying to imply that I’m not aware of what’s happening around us. Well, I am, and I can’t say I care for it.”
They walked in silence, and Imogen moved through some of the sacred patterns. She found herself twisting and turning, calling on that energy so that she might detect something from it. Benji did much the same, and she wasn’t surprised that he used a similar technique, especially now that she’d learned that he considered himself to be made from magic. He made it sound like he was somehow bound to something else, some greater part of the world that connected him in a deeper and more significant way than she was.
Unseen (First of the Blade Book 2) Page 2
