The Chain Breaker: Books 1-3

by Holmberg, D. K.

Hamish watched him.

  “It didn’t occur to me at first. I suppose it probably should have. Given everything I’d been through before in other cities, I became selective about the jobs I took. Not many people know that about me. Most have heard of my reputation or have learned of what I can do, and they’re willing to hire the name. But they didn’t look deeper. In the case of our employer,” he said, emphasizing it as he started to put things together, “I never bothered to question why the jobs were always ones I’d take. What did I care? I was in a new city.”

  As he talked, he glanced over at Thomas, who remained standing with sword in hand. Gavin realized that Thomas couldn’t move. Gaspar was likely frozen in place too.

  What about Imogen?

  She had her own unique abilities, though he didn’t have any idea what those were. If his hunch about what was taking place now was correct, then it wouldn’t even matter.

  He focused again on Hamish. “My jobs always came through an intermediary, and this intermediary knew so much about me.”

  “It has been my role to ensure that our employer knows all the details about you.”

  Gavin forced a smile and gripped the dagger tighter. “All of the details? I don’t think so. There were certain details even Hamish shouldn’t have known. Should he, Cyran?”

  He stared at Hamish, the curiosity from the previous night’s events coming back to him. Hamish’s disappearance and the use of doppelgängers for him and Imogen all suggested magical involvement. In the city, there shouldn’t have been that many people who had magic, yet he continued to encounter them. He doubted the sorcerer he’d encountered in the forest was responsible for all these occurrences.

  But the Apostle?

  The timing fit, as did the rumors of an incredibly powerful sorcerer. The El’aras had magic, but they weren’t the ones pulling the strings. No. The one responsible for all of this was the person he never knew had magic.

  Gavin looked around. “You can show yourself. I might not be as quick as you, but Tristan made sure I could piece through puzzles, same as you.”

  There was a soft shimmer around Hamish, and suddenly Cyran stood in front of him. The robes that were wrapped around him swirled with color, but even that began to fade.

  Cyran watched him, grinning. “It’s taken you a long time, Gavin.”

  Gavin glared at the person he once thought of as his friend. “Like I said, I may not be as quick as you, but eventually I learn.”

  “Eventually? You wouldn’t believe how long I’ve been waiting for you to uncover the truth, but you continued to fail me. Had you uncovered it sooner, I might’ve been more willing to spare you. You did make me uncertain with the enchantment you use to communicate. I had to get creative to understand it.”

  “Creative… is that why you made it look like Hamish died?”

  “I needed you to be close enough for me to understand your enchantment. I thought it amusing as well. Had it worked better, you would have mistrusted your team. I am surprised you know how to trust.”

  “I know how to do many things,” Gavin said. The strangeness of that whole scenario stuck with him. There had to have been more to it than trying to examine the enchantment and sow discord, though he doubted Cyran would share.

  “You could be useful, Gavin.”

  “What did you want with the Shard?”

  Cyran nodded toward the corpse. “Why don’t you ask her?”

  Gavin smiled. “I’m afraid she won’t have much to talk about.”

  “There are ways to get the dead to speak. I suppose that you never learned those techniques in your training with Tristan.” He sneered. “In my case, he made sure my gifts were developed. With my knowledge of medicine and poison and my ability to work through complicated problems, I wanted nothing more than to escape. And escape I did.”

  Gavin tried to take a step forward, but he was held in place. This sensation felt different than when he’d been frozen by Anna’s magic. Instead, the power that wrapped around him now reminded him of what he’d experienced when facing the sorcerer, suggesting that he and Cyran knew one another and practiced the same magic. That couldn’t be a coincidence.

  “Where did you end up?” Gavin asked.

  “I traveled. You know how hard it was to finally escape from Tristan?”

  “I know,” Gavin said softly.

  “After he was gone, everyone scattered. But not you. You stayed.”

  Gavin stared at him.

  Cyran scoffed. “Always the dutiful one.”

  “I wasn’t always dutiful.”

  “You always did what he wanted. You were always his favorite,” Cyran said.

  Gavin slammed into some invisible barrier that trapped him in place. “Is that what this is about?”

  “If only. Do you think I really care about what happened to me all those years ago? Do you think any of that matters now?”

  Gavin could see the lie in his eyes. Cyran might deny it, but it mattered to him. Much like it mattered to Gavin.

  How could it not?

  Everything that he’d encountered over the years since leaving Tristan was tied to what had happened to him all those years ago. He had suffered. The time with Tristan had changed him. It had changed everyone who had trained with Tristan. There was no denying that.

  But Gavin had been able to move on. Until coming to Yoran, he hadn’t even given much thought to what drove him.

  “I think it matters,” Gavin said.

  Cyran snarled. “You don’t understand anything!”

  “Help me understand then. Help me know why my friend turned on me.”

  “Friend? If I were your friend, you would have freed me.”

  “Did I not?”

  “You tried. You failed.”

  Gavin looked across the clearing. He couldn’t move, but as far as he knew, Cyran didn’t know that the corpse he had was not who he searched for.

  “Who was the one responsible for setting you free?” Gavin asked.

  “I was responsible,” Cyran said.

  “Maybe, but I was the one who took the risk. I was the one who protected you, the others, anyone who needed help. It was because of me that Tristan no longer tormented you or the others.”

  “The others. Do you even know what happened to them?” Cyran watched him. “In the time he’s been gone, have you even cared about what happened to your so-called brothers and sisters?”

  Gavin stared at him. “I think about them.”

  “How often?”

  He shook his head. “Probably not often enough.”

  “Well, I think about them. I think about them every day. I think about how none of them were able to escape. I think about how Tristan tortured them. I think about how he twisted their minds and forced them to serve. I think about the way he turned them into something they were not.”

  “They lived,” Gavin said.

  “Did they? What about you? His favorite. Did you live?”

  “I’ve lived.”

  “Lived by running. Lived by searching for something you never had. I don’t see that as living. I’m sure you don’t either.”

  “I’ve looked for answers. I’m not going to deny that, but he taught me. He helped me to understand.”

  “He did what he did because he was the one responsible,” Cyran said.

  Gavin didn’t move. Couldn’t move. He didn’t know if he even should.

  There was one more lesson Tristan had taught him, but it was a lesson Gavin was never all that good at taking to heart. He had to act rationally, not let emotion or anger or rage or get in the way. As he watched Cyran, he could feel the emotions rising. For a man who believed in thinking rather than feeling, he was surprised he was letting Cyran get to him.

  “Now you’re the one who’s responsible for using me,” Gavin said.

  “I must admit I found it a sweet irony that he taught the person I would need.”

  “For what?”

  “For this,” Cyran said, gesturing to the b
ody. “You brought me what I wanted. You brought me the Risen Shard.”

  Gavin shook his head. “I didn’t. And that doesn’t explain why you needed me for all of those other jobs.”

  “Part of that was curiosity. I needed to know how skilled you actually were. The rumors of you were quite fantastic. Do you realize that in Berman, they speak about you as a sorcerer?” He smiled, and the bands of power trapping Gavin started to constrict again. “I knew that wasn’t true. I knew you would never embrace magic. But I needed to better understand you. You see, when you were younger, there were aspects that always intrigued me. Aspects of your ability, your power, that Tristan never was willing to speak about, but the rest of us did. We understood you were something special. Even as children, we saw it. We might not have known what that meant, but we saw it from you.”

  Gavin stared at him, his mind racing to understand everything Cyran was saying. “So the other jobs were tests.”

  “Of a sort. I needed to know if you could be counted on for the most important job. I needed to know if you had the potential to claim the Risen Shard.”

  Gavin tried to pull on the energy of the El’aras dagger. With its magic, he thought he might be able to use it to get himself free, but he didn’t know how to break the magic holding him.

  “You see,” Cyran continued, “you’ve also proven to be quite easy to hold with only the faintest magical grip. If you were any more capable, this wouldn’t be strong enough.” He took a step away from Gavin to stand closer to the corpse. “And now I am going to complete my task.”

  “What task?”

  “The one that must be finished.”

  “Are you trying to piss me off? I don’t really understand. I guess that doesn’t matter anyway because you got it wrong. All of it.”

  “Did I? You brought me everything I needed. First, you brought me the Shard, and I thought that was significant enough. In fact, I was even willing to abandon the other assignment—so much so that I was willing to kill you myself. I admit it was a bit painful. Poisoning you was not something I expected to do, but when you came to my home holding onto the Shard, I knew I had to act. You couldn’t have known the significance of what you’d brought and what it meant to me.”

  Gavin shook his head and looked at the corpse. “You still don’t understand.”

  “And then you completed the task,” Cyran continued, ignoring him. “It was on a whim that I went back that evening. I hadn’t intended to. I really didn’t expect you to show up. I went on the chance that you might have survived.” He smiled. “And there you were. I had already known that you and the Risen Shard had spoken, so I knew you were familiar with who she was, even if you didn’t know what she was. When you completed the job…”

  He pulled something from his pocket. It was the glowing crystal—the Shard. He held it closer to the corpse.

  “What are you going to do?” Gavin asked.

  “The next step in my progression. You see, in order for me to advance my power, I have to steal from another who has it. In this case, I need the Shard. Once she is reanimated, I can take her power. I wasn’t going to be able to do it while she was alive, but dead? I doubt she would even have known such a thing was possible.”

  Gavin had no idea what was taking place, but he knew that if Cyran were to try to use that Shard now, he would realize that he’d been played.

  “Are you hearing this?” he whispered into the enchantment.

  The voice was soft in his ear. “Yes.”

  He watched Cyran, waiting for some sort of reaction to indicate that Cyran had heard him talk to Anna, but there was none.

  “He never trusted you,” Gavin blurted. He needed to distract Cyran from bringing the Shard too close to the body. He had no idea who she was but worried that even a corpse could cause some trouble. He had no idea what would happen if Cyran discovered the truth or how he would react. Worse, he had no idea what Cyran might force him to do.

  Cyran turned to him. “What was that?”

  Gavin shook his head. “He never trusted you. He didn’t trust your desire for knowledge.”

  “He pushed me into that desire.”

  “No. He wanted us to understand ourselves. He never forced me to become anything I wasn’t anyway. He wanted me to do what I wanted; to understand myself.” That wasn’t quite the truth, but close enough at this point. All he needed was to delay him a little more.

  Gavin held onto the dagger, feeling the strange resistance. He tried twisting his wrist, tried moving it, but he couldn’t. Somehow, he was going to have to break out of the magical bands around him. This was the kind of thing he’d trained for. Tristan had taught him to break free from anything holding him, to fight through every bit of resistance. That it was magical didn’t matter.

  “Understand myself? Are you saying he wanted me to pursue this?” Cyran held his hands out on either side of him. The Shard was in one hand, stretched away from his body.

  If Gavin could twist, he might be able to flick the dagger and free himself. Cyran brought his hands back together, and the bands around Gavin constricted again. He couldn’t fight that.

  Cyran shrugged. “Perhaps that is what he wanted. Perhaps he knew what I was capable of. That might have been why he pushed me the way he did, much like he pushed you the way he did.”

  “He pushed me to be stronger. Faster. That’s all.”

  “He pushed you to become heartless. To become a killer.”

  “Only he didn’t want me to be completely heartless.” Gavin stared at him, shaking his head. “That’s something you never really understood. The lessons he taught me and the torment he put me through were to make sure that my heart was solid. That my intentions were pure.” He had to stall for time. He wasn’t sure whether he could figure out a way to break free of the magic, but maybe there was something in the lessons he’d learned from Tristan that would help.

  Even now, when Gavin thought about it, he couldn’t help but feel as if the torment he’d endured was more than what he’d deserved. In all that time, he’d never really understood what Tristan had wanted from him. Each time he’d endured a beating, it was as if Tristan was forcing him to turn, to become something else.

  Gavin was meant to become a killer. That much was true. But he’d been trained to become the kind of killer who understood the reason behind what they were doing. He couldn’t kill indiscriminately. He had to have a purpose for everything he did. It was one lesson he’d failed.

  As he looked at Cyran, he realized that Cyran had never learned that lesson.

  “You’re the reason he died, aren’t you?” Gavin whispered.

  “Am I? I must admit I wasn’t disappointed. There were many who thought you were responsible, especially since you were the one who found him.”

  “I didn’t kill him. You knew that.”

  “I don’t know if I knew that or not. Besides, it doesn’t matter. The outcome is the same regardless. He’s gone. I am not. And now—”

  He brought the Shard toward the corpse.

  The body started to shrivel.

  Gavin didn’t know what was happening at first, but the power was starting to fade. The magic Anna had put around it, the illusion she’d created, disappeared as the Shard approached the body.

  Cyran stared for a long moment before turning his attention to Gavin. “You brought me an illusion?”

  “You wanted the body.”

  “The body of the Risen Shard would not disintegrate like this. Where is she?” He looked over at Thomas and carried the Shard toward him.

  A dark power began to glow within the Shard. Thomas tried to withdraw, but he was held the same way Gavin was and couldn’t get away from what Cyran was doing. Gavin attempted to lunge forward but couldn’t.

  Cyran placed the dark, glowing crystal against Thomas’s neck and pressed it forward. “Where is she?”

  “I will not betray the Shard,” Thomas said.

  “Then you will die.”

  Cyran pushed the
crystal into Thomas’s neck. His eyes were frozen in terror, but he said nothing.

  Gavin focused on his core reserves. That was what Cyran had tried to suppress. By holding onto that energy, Gavin thought he might be able to find enough power to overwhelm the magic and free himself. That was what Tristan had always taught him. He had to do what he needed to do to find that strength. Tristan had known that power was within him, and he’d trained Gavin to access that energy deep within and fill him.

  Gavin sensed the power within him. It was his core. His reserves. His life. All of his training, all of his knowledge, everything came to him. He closed his eyes, letting that energy fill him. And then he pushed outward on the bands holding him. He felt a sense of pressure, and for a moment, he didn’t think it was going to work.

  Lessons came flooding back to him. Ever since he’d been around Cyran again, those memories were resurfacing more frequently than they had before, and they filled his mind in a way they hadn’t in years. By pulling on that power and energy and by focusing on them, he could feel what he needed to do. He hesitated as he let a memory come back to him.

  Tristan had bound him with leather straps many times. When Gavin had learned how to overpower the leather straps, he moved on to rope. He broke out of that as well, and then he progressed to chains.

  Even they didn’t hold him. That’s how he earned his nickname when he was young.

  It wasn’t just that Gavin was strong. Tristan had trained him to be strong and fast— those traits had been part of the lessons that were instilled in him.

  Do not let limitations bind you.

  At the time, Gavin had no idea what Tristan had been trying to teach him, other than that he had to keep moving, that he had to keep fighting. He had to ignore the voices that tried to tell him that he couldn’t accomplish something.

  He remembered straining against the leather straps, the rope, and then the chains. Each one had been its own challenge. Each one had seemed impossible at the time, but as he’d grown more capable at it, he was able to overpower them.

  This was just one more chain. This was just one more barrier that he had to find his way through. He focused on it, and he called upon the core reserves, letting the energy fill him.