Jakob stared at him, letting out a soft sigh. “I’ve changed, but then again, so have you.”
“It seems as if you had a choice to change, whereas I had none.”
“I don’t know that I had much of a choice. When you fell to the madness, and when Father died, I could have either remained in Chrysia, or gone with the historian to see what else the world might have for me.”
“Apparently, the world had power for you.”
Would he have discovered his abilities had he never gone with Novan? He thought it almost inevitable, but maybe that wasn’t the case.
“Do you resent the fact that I have these powers?”
Scottan looked at his hands, and he breathed out in a snort. “I don’t think I have any right to resent anything. From what I’ve heard, it sounds like I owe you for my recovery.”
“I couldn’t let you die, not if there was something I could do to help.”
Scottan looked up, the haunted hollows of his eyes casting shadows on his face. “Would I have died?”
“Most who fall to the madness eventually die from it,” Jakob said.
Scottan took a deep breath and looked back down to his hands. “Perhaps it would have been better had I died.”
“Not for me.”
Silence hung between them, and Jakob let it. He stepped closer, finally taking his brother’s hands, and kneeled in front of him.
“I wasn’t ready to lose you. I lost father, and mother. How much more would I have to lose?”
“I can barely walk. Have… your friends… told you that?”
“You’ll recover in time. I think it’s a matter of gaining strength. You were sick for a long time. I don’t think you can expect to recover overnight.”
“I would have been content to recover over these last few weeks. I don’t think I’ve gotten any better during your absence.”
Jakob frowned and pushed out with his ahmaean, wrapping it around his brother. He had slightly more control than the last time he’d seen him, and using his connection to it, he pressed into Scottan, probing for injury and illness, but found neither.
“I think it is nothing more than time before you recuperate,” he said.
“How can you know?”
“Because I can’t find anything wrong with your body. Physically, I think you will recover.” It may take him longer for his mind to recover, but the Scottan that Jakob knew was strong and resilient. Why shouldn’t he be able to recover?
“How can you know anything about my body. How can you know… How can you know what you know?”
“Somehow, I was born into an ancient race of beings known as the damahne.”
“Damahne?” Scottan seemed to struggle with forming the word, as if his mouth didn’t want to make the sound necessary to say it. “You were born to our mother and father. You were born to the same beings as I was.”
Jakob didn’t know how he’d managed to gain abilities of the damahne, only that he had. Had he not lived through it, he probably would’ve thought the same as Scottan. “I don’t understand it any better than anyone else, but what I do know tells me that I share abilities like those we once would have called the gods.”
“Jakob—”
“I have seen things, and done things, that should not be possible. I met one of the damahne and helped her as she was dying. She… awoke something within me. I don’t know how to describe it any better than that, other than to say that as she died, she passed part of herself on to me.”
Scottan watched him, his face unreadable. “When I first saw you here, when you first met me in the clearing with the daneamiin”— Scottan struggled to say the word daneamiin much as he had struggled to say damahne—“I thought that maybe I was dreaming. How else could I explain what had happened other than a dream? In the time that you’ve been gone, I’ve spoken to a few of the daneamiin, but they don’t provide many answers. One of them tries and tells me how you’ve become this damahne, but she says things like the fibers require this of you, and other things that make equally no sense.”
Jakob patted Scottan’s hand. “Would it be easier for you if we went someplace more familiar to you?”
Scottan grunted. “Easier? I don’t think that anything is easier. Ever since I woke, nothing has been easy. Walking hasn’t been easy. Eating hasn’t been easy. Sleeping hasn’t been easy.” He looked up and met Jakob’s eyes. “I’ve been dreaming. The dreams are strange, vivid, but they’re like memories that can’t be mine. I don’t know how to explain it anyway other than that.”
Jakob wondered at that. The madness had been caused by Raime and his impact on the fibers. Was there some residual effect from the way Raime tainted the fibers? Had he changed something in such a way that Scottan would have memories of what he’d seen—and experienced—when his mind had been clouded?
And then there was the question of what had happened to the others who had suffered from the madness. Jakob had helped with Scottan in particular, but his focus had been on restoring the damage done to the fibers. Would others who had fallen to the effects of the madness also have recovered?
Why wouldn’t they?
And if they had, how many of them awoke much like Scottan, weakened and near death, and perhaps even suffering from images and memories that they didn’t understand?
Jakob squeezed Scottan’s hands and closed his eyes, focusing on a place that he had spent many days.
He shifted.
When he opened his eyes, they stood inside the library of Chrysia. The rows of shelves were darkened, and the musty odor of the books filled his nostrils. Dust hung in the air. Scottan pulled on his hands, attempting to step away from him, but Jakob held on to them, not wanting his brother to get away from him, not wanting his brother scared of what had happened.
“How—”
Jakob pointed to the shelves. “This is Chrysia. The library.”
“But how did we get here?”
“That’s part of my abilities. I can travel.”
“That’s what you’ve been doing? Traveling? I thought you were somewhere else in the daneamiin city. When they talked about you off learning about your abilities, I assumed that you were somewhere with them learning about them.”
Jakob shook his head. “The daneamiin can teach me some about my abilities, but what I can do is different from what they can do.”
“Why here?”
Jakob guided him out of the library, and into the courtyard. From here, he could see the Ur practice yard. Scottan had spent many days here and had trained incredibly hard, honing his ability with the sword. “I thought that bringing you someplace more familiar might make this easier. You said you are having a hard time with the daneamiin. I can understand that. The Unknown Lands are… impossible to understand.”
Scottan released Jakob’s hand and took unsteady steps across the courtyard, then stopped and simply stared. “How long was I sick? How long was it that I wasn’t able to function?”
Jakob wasn’t sure how to reply. “A long time.”
Scottan turned and looked at him. “How long?”
“Years. You became sick gradually, but it has been years.”
“And you didn’t take care of me?”
“We did for as long as we could, but then we had to take you to the santrium.”
Scottan fell silent as he continued to look around him. How much of the courtyard had changed in the time since he’d fallen sick? Jakob didn’t remember clearly.
When he turned his attention to where the church once stood, tears welled in his eyes. “Father died there?”
Jakob breathed out. That day was etched in his mind. He looked to the spot where he had been standing when he watched the tower collapse. If he wanted, would he be able to walk back along the fibers and see his father’s last moments? Did he want to? What would that torment give him other than more heartache?
“The tower was destroyed by the Deshmahne. Father was inside when it came down. He was trying to help others get free.”
He reiterated what Novan had told him. Even if it wasn’t true, Jakob wanted to believe that it was. That was how he wanted to remember his father.
“Father was killed by falling stone?”
“From what I could tell. I… I didn’t do well when the attack came. The Deshmahne responsible are gone.”
“How can you know?”
“Because I killed them.”
Scottan stared at him for a moment, and his gaze drifted down to the sword at Jakob’s side. “So much has changed. So much about you has changed. You speak of fighting in a way that some of the seasoned soldiers of Ur never did. You wear your sword in a way that tells me that you’re comfortable with it. And then you make the simple comment about killing the men responsible for killing our father.” Scottan studied Jakob. “How is it that you gained such skill?”
“I trained with General Endric.”
Scottan’s eyes widened. “Endric? As in the Denraen general?”
“The Denraen came to Chrysia, guarding the Magi. They had a choosing.”
“And you were chosen?”
Jakob smiled to himself, thinking of those first days that he had practiced with Endric, not knowing that he was the Denraen general. What would he have done had he known? Would he have continued to work with him during those earliest days? Unlikely. He would have been too afraid of wasting the man’s time.
“In a way.”
“What does that mean?”
“The historian, Novan, took me from the city. I traveled with the Denraen, and trained with General Endric most days.”
Scottan whistled softly. “And that’s how you became so skilled?”
“That, and it seems that I have something of a talent for it.”
“Jakob… You never had much talent. You were adequate, but you never were able to develop in ways that would have made you a useful soldier.”
The words were blunt, harsh, but nonetheless true. Jakob hadn’t much ability with the sword before working with Endric. Somehow, working with the old general had awoken something in Jakob. Had it been working with Endric that had awoken something in him, or had it been the fact that Jakob had used the sword he’d found under his father’s bed—that Neamiin had awoken something in him?
He shrugged. There wasn’t an answer, certainly not one that would explain anything to Scottan, mostly because Jakob wasn’t any more certain than his brother was.
Scottan kept his gaze on Jakob’s sword. His hands clenched, tensing before relaxing. He breathed out slowly. “What am I to do now? I was a soldier, but that’s not me, not anymore. This body”—he swept his hands up and down his form—“won’t cooperate with me. I don’t think I could work through a single pattern, let alone a series. I don’t know if I could even hold the sword long enough to be of any use.”
Jakob wished he had the learned how to use his ability to glimpse along the fibers, to tease them apart enough that he could see what Scottan had ahead of him. If he could, he could help his brother understand what he was meant to do. Would doing so cheapen something for him? Would it lessen his choices in some way?
There seemed to be much about the fibers that Jakob didn’t fully understand, and maybe he never would, especially without a true guide to walk him through what it meant for him to have his abilities. Though looking back along the fibers and learning from his ancestors was helpful, he knew in the end, he had to figure it out on his own.
“I wish I had answers for you, Scottan, but I don’t.”
“If what you’re telling me is true, you’re basically one of the gods!”
Jakob smiled sadly. “The gods were never real, not as we believe them to be. They were never all powerful and were never omnipotent. They were beings who did what they thought was right, trying to keep the world safe.” He sighed. Was that what he was now? Was that what he was to become? If it was, he saw value in it and thought that he could be content with that as his life’s mission.
“You’re real enough.”
Jakob smiled again. “I can take you wherever you would prefer to be. If you want to stay in Chrysia, I will leave you here. If you’d like to go back to the Unknown Lands, I will take you there. Tell me what I can do for you.”
Scottan closed his eyes and breathed slowly for a few moments. When he opened them again, there was a resolve within them. It was an expression that Jakob was well accustomed to. It was a look that he recognized from the Scottan of his youth.
“You said there were others like me?”
“You mean, others who suffered from the madness?”
Scottan nodded.
“There were many,” Jakob said.
“And after you… did whatever it was that you did to heal me, what happened to these others?”
“I’m not certain. It’s possible that they were healed the same as you.”
“If they were healed, they would have questions, much like I have questions. I think… I think that I will stay in Chrysia and see what I can do to help them.”
Jakob watched his brother as he sent bands of ahmaean toward him, swirling around him. As he did, he could see that Scottan’s resiliency had returned, as had the strength.
Perhaps he would truly be well.
“I will return to check on you.”
Scottan chuckled. “Maybe you want to return more carefully. We don’t want to scare the people of the city with a visit from one of the gods.”
Jakob pulled his brother to him and hugged him tightly. When he released him, he stepped back and shifted.
Chapter Three
Brohmin stared across the vast ocean, feeling the ship rock in the massive swells, the salt spray cresting over the bow and drenching him. The journey to the southlands had taken longer than he wanted, and longer than the captain had anticipated, but they were nearly there. Soon, they would reach the port of Polle Pal, and from there, they could find their way to Masetohl.
It had been years since he’d spent any amount of time in the south. So much of his effort over the last few decades had been spent understanding what Raime had been up to, trying to prepare for a response—that was his role as the Hunter—and readying for whatever the High Priest might plan. Despite that, they still hadn’t managed to anticipate what he would do.
Salindra slipped her hand into his and squeezed.
Brohmin glanced over at her. She was lovely. Her dark hair hung longer than it had when he’d first met her, and she no longer hunched over, hiding her height—no longer afraid that she would be discovered as Magi and that something more could happen to her. Some of her confidence came from the healing the daneamiin had provided, but that wasn’t all of it. Brohmin didn’t know quite what had changed for her, whether it was only the healing or something more, but he was thankful for it.
“You seem pensive,” Salindra said. “That’s been my role.”
Brohmin grinned. “Pensive, perhaps. More… nervous about what we might encounter.”
“Don’t you know what we’ll find when we reach port?”
His grin faded. Knowing what they would encounter was the reason he was pensive. “I’m troubled that I’ve neglected this for as long as I have. This is something I should have done years ago.”
“Years ago? The Deshmahne haven’t been a threat for that long.”
A massive wave rolled beneath them, sending Salindra sliding toward the railing. Brohmin held on to her hand, keeping her from sliding away from him. As the ship settled, she wiped the salt water off her forehead and shook her head. She clenched her jaw, something she had done often over the last few days during the crossing.
“I’ll be thankful to be off this ship.”
“Thankful until we start dealing with the Deshmahne.”
“It needs to be done, Brohmin. They’re dangerous.”
Brohmin grunted. They had been more than dangerous. They had instigated an attack in the north. War. The Conclave had managed to prevent war for hundreds of years, and the Deshmahne overturned everything the Conclave had done
and created a new instability.
It was possible that the insurgents had miscalculated. That miscalculation was something Brohmin hoped would come from the war but wasn’t sure if it had yet happened. Could the Magi finally leave Vasha, and attempt to exert their influence once more? That seemed too much to believe. Then again, having warrior Magi once more in the world was also too much to believe, and he had seen them himself. He had fought alongside them.
“What’s your plan for when we reach port?” Salindra asked. She spaced her legs slightly apart, and now rolled with the ship, and managed to handle the next massive wave that crested much more easily than the last. She remained tensed, and if they had a sudden rogue wave, she’d likely go crashing into the railing.
Brohmin was impressed by Salindra. She was smart, perhaps as smart as any Mage that he’d ever worked with, and shared a stubbornness with him. He hadn’t decided whether that stubbornness was a good thing or bad.
“When we reach port, we’ll make our way to Masetohl.”
“Masetohl? You would have us go to the university there?”
“I know the Magi don’t hold the universities in the highest regard, but they are places of learning. Even the university in Vasha can show you things that the Magi have not yet discovered.”
The slight tension in her cheeks told him that she struggled to believe that. Despite everything that Salindra had been through, she was still a Mage. She still supported her people.
“And what do you hope to learn in Masetohl?”
“I need to learn exactly what the Deshmahne have been up to. The university will have kept track of that.”
“What happens if the university has been compromised by the Deshmahne?”
That was the real risk and one that Brohmin didn’t have an answer to—not yet. Bringing Salindra with him to the south created additional dangers, and he knew that she wasn’t completely aware of what those dangers were, and knew that she had a stubbornness that made her believe that even with the dangers, she would somehow be safe.
Salindra was powerful. Perhaps even more powerful now, after her time with the daneamiin, and in the house of the Cala maah, but she was still only a Mage. The Deshmahne had discovered abilities that countered the Mage ability and would place her in even more danger than she realized. If only Salindra would be more willing to learn how to use a sword, to fight like the warrior Magi like Roelle, then she would be better equipped to protect herself, something that Brohmin suspected would be increasingly necessary in these lands.
The Lost City (The Lost Prophecy Book 5) Page 3
