The Great Betrayal (The Lost Prophecy Book 8)

by D. K. Holmberg

  Selton turned away and looked out over the sea. His arms were crossed over his chest, and when he stood like this, he had a certain set to his jaw, and a hint of agitation within him. She had known him well enough—and long enough—that she recognized it.

  “You don’t have to come with us,” she said.

  “You intend to face the groeliin.”

  “I do.”

  “How can I leave that fight to you? Knowing what I do, having seen what I have, you know as well as I do that I can’t abandon that. It’s just that I…”

  “I understand. You don’t like the way everything has changed,” she said.

  He shook his head and turned to look over at her. “I don’t like how you have changed.”

  Roelle chose not to say anything. Whatever she might say to him would only upset him further. How could she tell him that she had changed because she had needed to? He hadn’t changed, and that might be more troubling to her than anything else. After everything they had seen and experienced, she expected Selton to have reacted differently. How could he not?

  “Whatever help you’re able to offer, I will take.”

  And as they neared Vasha, heading toward the Antrilii lands, she might have to convince him to leave her.

  That bothered her much more than she would like to admit. Selton had been a steadying presence, and without him, she probably would have died, either on the way to Vasha when he had grudgingly agreed to take her to the Great Forest, or at least while fighting the Lashiin priests here in these lands.

  But she couldn’t continue to fear what Selton might do, and how he might react. She still had over thirty Magi warriors, most of them now marked with power, augmenting their natural abilities, and they couldn’t risk Selton attempting to undermine them.

  Roelle clenched her jaw. She recognized the nature of those thoughts. That was the influence of the tattoo. She had to be careful. There was the potential for it to overpower her, which was what the High Desh had warned her about.

  “I will help,” Selton said. “You know that I will.”

  She watched him, wishing that she did.

  If nothing else, she was thankful for the help that he had been able to offer, even if she knew that it wouldn’t last.

  Chapter Eight

  Jakob gripped the arms of the teralin chair, holding tightly to them. They were warm, though not unpleasantly so, much the way teralin was often warm. He drew strength from the teralin and from the Tower, filling himself with an augmentation to his ahmaean.

  How many times would he be able to step back and follow Raime? How many times would he be able to do so without exposing his presence? How long would he last before he was too weak to travel like this anymore?

  Before he went to Novan, he wanted to know whether Raime had revealed the historian code. If he could find that out, there might be some benefit to his going back. And he wanted to search other niduses of Raime’s to see if he could find the one that was important enough to him to reveal who he served.

  The nemerahl warned that there would be many niduses along Raime’s strand, but they would be old. They had to be. Raime had served on the Conclave once, so Jakob thought he could use the last place he had visited to search forward. That would leave fewer significant events for him to chase.

  Jakob identified the nidus that he had visited before. He had never gone back to the same time and wondered whether it would be exactly the same, or if time there would have passed in his absence.

  He identified a nidus close to that one, but far enough apart that something else significant had to have happened.

  Jakob pulled upon his connection to the ahmaean, drawing it to him. As he did, he surged into Raime’s strand, joining with him, and retreating to a small corner in the back of his mind.

  When he opened his eyes, Jakob was inside a darkened building. Three men leaned forward, their heads touching the ground, a towel rolled beneath them.

  Prayer.

  Raime stared, shocked.

  One of the men was Benham, and he stretched out, his forehead pressed to the ground, words mumbled unintelligibly.

  These men were responsible for destroying the city. How was it that they were engaged in prayer?

  Had he misread them?

  He had thought them a part of the Unbelievers and thought that to be the reason they were willing to destroy so much of the city—as well as the temple. If they weren’t, why would they extol such violence?

  Raime moved to the corner of the room, watching. The men continued to pray, and one of the voices rose higher than the others and called out with a passion that Raime heard only from priests. Could it be that these men were not Unbelievers at all but devout?

  But they had killed others who were Believers.

  He shook away the thought and stepped out of the building.

  Jakob was unsure why there was a nidus at this moment in Raime’s strand. He saw nothing of importance happen, so when Raime left the building, Jakob withdrew back to the fibers to search for the next nidus.

  When he appeared at the next nidus, he looked around, staring out through Raime’s eyes. Everything around him was still. The street was quiet. The air held a stink of ash, and there was a coppery scent—that of blood. He had smelled it too often of late.

  Raime’s hands burned from where he had been working with the powders that Benham had been teaching him to use. That was the price of Raime’s cooperation. He had begun to learn the secret to building explosives, and if he could document the powders they use, he might be able to find a way to counter them. So far, all he had learned was how to use them to destroy. He had not learned anything about these powders that would help him discover a way to stop them.

  His ears rang from the most recent explosion. He had been far too close this time. So had the others. They had lost one of the Unbelievers to the explosion, his arm blown off by the force of the explosion.

  He glanced up at the sky and wished for a glimpse of the sun. It had been days since the sky had cleared enough for him to see it. Even rain would be welcomed. So far, all he saw was the remnants of the explosions, that of dust suspended in the air, smoke that seemed to linger, and the horrible stink that came with each explosion.

  Raime tried not to think about what that stench meant, but he knew.

  Had he given up too much?

  He tried not to think about that, knowing that the Guild would want to know the secrets he had discovered. Would it matter if he pretended to demonstrate the code?

  Within Raime’s mind, Jakob stirred.

  Raime hadn’t revealed the code. That much was reassuring.

  Would he be able to pretend for much longer? It seemed that Raime was trying to remain faithful to the Guild, a devotion to something that surprised Jakob.

  He retreated to the back of Raime’s mind once more, resisting the urge to assert himself.

  Somehow, Raime had to reach the edge of the city before they were captured. He was determined to leave a copy of his journal somewhere and hadn’t found a good place to hide it. If he did, the Guild could find it, and they could read his observations.

  But where could he leave it where it wouldn’t be destroyed?

  He had to leave some record. If something happened to him, and if these Unbelievers decided to destroy him as well as everything he possessed, there needed to be some record of what he’d gone through.

  “Keep moving,” Benham said.

  He must’ve yelled it for Raime to have heard. Everything was muted from the last explosion. Raime’s head throbbed, and he feared that he’d been injured more than he realized. Too often, it was easy for the explosions to leave him like this. There had been another where he’d felt his head nearly blown off by the force of the explosion, and he’d been quite a bit farther away than he had with this one.

  “How much longer do you intend for us to go?” Raime asked.

  “As long as we need to. The city is gone. The last one—”

  Raime nodded
. The last one had taken out the temple.

  That had pained him as much as anything. Even though he was a historian, and had been trained to observe with impartiality, losing the temple had been difficult for him. There was a comforting sense to the temples, and he still believed in the power and authority of the gods, unlike the Unbelievers.

  They hadn’t shown him anything that would convince him otherwise. How much longer would he be able to keep up this farce? For the sake of his documentation, it would have to be maintained. They couldn’t find out that Raime still sided with the believers.

  “Keep moving,” Benham said again.

  Raime hadn’t realized that he’d stopped until Benham had urged him forward once more. He staggered forward, trying to hurry along the street, but there were plenty of places where he had to weave around fallen buildings, and some deep divots within the ground, places where the explosives had been set.

  He couldn’t help but be impressed by the brutality of the explosives. How could the other side win when the Unbelievers had such knowledge?

  For that matter, how could they have acquired such knowledge? It was dangerous—and it seemed as if there was something they still hadn’t shared with Raime. Explosions he had managed to accomplish had been controlled, and much smaller than the massive ones that leveled much of the city.

  They passed by the remains of the temple. This close to it, Raime paused, looking at the fallen stone. His jaw clenched, and he tried to keep his breathing regular, wanting to prevent himself from revealing how upset the sight of the fallen temple made him, but he wasn’t entirely certain that he succeeded.

  “Do you feel it?” Benham asked.

  “Feel what?”

  “The energy in the air. That’s the power of the explosions. The Believers claim they can reach the gods, but what’s godlier than what we’ve demonstrated? How can they claim such a connection when they don’t access this kind of power?”

  “But they could,” Raime said. He turned to the other man, watching as he considered the temple. Benham looked at it eagerly, and Raime saw the satisfaction in his eyes at what had happened. How many priests had died inside the temple? How many more would die before the Unbelievers were satisfied with the amount of destruction they were able to inflict?

  “Could they? There’s more than knowledge required to achieve this. There is a level of intent. If they don’t have that intent, there’s nothing that would give it to them, nothing that would make them godlier.”

  Raime shifted the scarf that kept him from breathing in too much of the smoke and debris. It covered his nose, but he couldn’t always keep it in place as it was filled with filth. He needed a clean source of water, but there weren’t many of those within the city. When they left the city, that’s where he could find a stream, and could rinse the scarf, and for that matter, could bathe himself.

  “Where now?” he asked.

  “Now, we move on to the next place. And the next.”

  Already, they had traveled through three other cities. None was quite as large as Jarva, but all had been left in much the same fashion. Entire cities leveled, and people sent running from their homes, forced into hiding. Eventually, Raime suspected they would all end up in the same place, making their way to one of the few remaining safe zones, but that would require going to one of the massive cities, and from what he’d seen, often those cities weren’t always welcoming of refugees.

  They reached the edge of the city, and Raime lingered, looking back. He fidgeted with one of the copies of his journal in his pocket. Where would he hide it if the Unbelievers destroyed every city they went to? The need to preserve the record of what had taken place here took precedence over his own safety. As a historian, he couldn’t simply let the story die in his possession

  “It’s impressive, isn’t it?” Benham asked.

  “What’s impressive is your devotion to continue to destroy these cities,” Raime said.

  Benham smiled. “Is that what you think this is all about? You think it’s all about simply destroying the cities?”

  Raime glanced over to him. “If not, what is it about?”

  “After all this time, you still don’t understand that it’s about so much more. We have used strength in a show of force to punish those who don’t believe as they should.”

  “By destroying the places in which others worship?”

  Benham furrowed his brow, watching Raime with a deep intensity. “Have you decided to oppose us, then?”

  “I’m not opposing anything; I’m simply trying to understand. That’s the role of the historians. We seek understanding in places where it has not been before.”

  “I thought the role of the historians was to document.”

  Raime shrugged. “Observe, document, and try to share understanding from what we’ve learned.”

  “What have you learned so far?”

  “I’ve learned that there is danger in your approach. How many of your own have been lost because of what they’ve chosen to do?”

  “It’s a price they pay for their purpose. It’s a sacrifice we all make to ensure that those who falsely claim to know the power of the gods are punished for their mistakes.”

  Raime looked at the other man, suppressing his disgust. Could he really be arguing that it was devotion that motivated them to destroy like this?

  Not Unbelievers, not as so many thought. These people used the Unbelievers.

  But why?

  People in the city were scared, and they feared the attacks of the Unbelievers, thinking that they were responsible for the explosions, and it motivated them, coordinating them.

  How many of the Believers were like Benham and his men? How many were willing to destroy in order to achieve the outcome they thought was necessary to convince the rest of the world that the Unbelievers were at fault?

  Too many.

  Raime had kept records and had documented what he’d seen, but would it be enough? Would anyone else realize what he’d seen, and be able to piece together the truth?

  Somehow, there would have to be an end to this war, and it might require recognizing that there was more to it than most believed.

  “I’m willing to understand,” Raime said.

  Benham studied him. “I don’t think you are—not yet. But you will soon see that power and strength are another way of giving yourself over to the gods.”

  Jakob withdrew, receding to the back of Raime’s mind and then stepped back into the fibers again.

  What had he just witnessed?

  There was something in the words Benham spoke that reminded him of the Deshmahne, and were that the case, they had existed far longer than he had ever realized.

  At that time, Raime had been disturbed by these early Deshmahne and what he saw. Something had changed, but what was it?

  And he still hadn’t found the person Raime served.

  He had to look further along Raime’s strand to find the nidus that would help him understand.

  He searched and found another bundle of glowing light nearby, and stepped toward it. As he did, he took up the same position in Raime’s mind as he had before, deep in the recesses, not wanting to reveal himself. He looked out through his eyes.

  The city was destroyed.

  As Raime stood on the mountain ledge, looking down upon the ruins of the city, he couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by what he saw. The city had stood for hundreds of years. And now it was nothing more than rubble. How much more would be destroyed during this war? How much more would be lost?

  He glanced over to his companions. Benham was injured, his arm in a splint, and he’d lost the tips of two of his fingers during a particularly bad explosion that had gone awry. The others, Heyla and James, were both in better shape, but they were silent, having said nothing over the last few days.

  Had they not expected what had occurred?

  Raime hadn’t been prepared for what had occurred. He certainly hadn’t expected to see the entire city destroyed in this wa
y. He knew the explosives were powerful, but he had not expected them to have quite this effect.

  “We need to keep moving, or they’ll catch us,” Benham said.

  “I need to document what occurred,” Raime said. He tried to be as dispassionate as he could, but it was difficult to do that when he looked over the city. He had spent much time in Norahn over the years, enough that he hated seeing it fall in such a way. Having it lost like this… It pained him in ways that losing some of the other cities had not.

  Still, he was determined to maintain his position and continue to observe. Wasn’t that the reason that he had agreed to this task? Wasn’t that the reason he had sacrificed what he had?

  Raime had given up much in order to take this position. And so much had changed for him since he’d started out, he had willingly sacrificed far more than he had ever expected he would.

  “You and your documentation. Had you not paused as you had, I might still have my fingers.”

  Raime glanced over and frowned. “How many others are you going to blame for the loss of your fingers? You are the one who made the mistake with the combination of explosives.”

  Raime had learned much about explosives in the last few months and had discovered that there was a combination of powders—all naturally occurring—that allowed Benham and others like him to create the incredible explosions that had leveled Jarva and many of the other cities since then.

  “I forget how much you’ve seen,” Benham said.

  “I have not needed to travel with you that long to discover those secrets,” Raime said, turning his attention away from the other man and back toward the ruins of the city. Piles of debris were scattered, and he could practically see where the temple had once risen. There was an energy about it that lingered in the air far longer than any of the debris and dust from the explosion. It was a strange sensation, and it left a tingling across his skin.