The Great Betrayal (The Lost Prophecy Book 8)

by D. K. Holmberg

  He closed his eyes and shifted to the city.

  Jakob stood and waited for Malaya and Paden to appear. Their shifting took a moment longer, though both of them were growing more skilled with the process. Of the damahne Jakob had connected to, there were nearly a dozen who had shown some promise with shifting, something that made him think they were better connected to their true damahne abilities.

  “Now what?” Malaya asked.

  “Now—”

  Jakob didn’t have a chance to finish. A massive Antrilii warrior stepped out of a door and onto the street. The man took one look at Jakob before his gaze drifted to the others with him. He hurried toward him.

  Malaya gasped as he did. Paden stood stiffly next to Jakob.

  “Nahrsin. It has been far too long.”

  Nahrsin bowed his head. “Damahne. I did not expect you to come to Farsea.”

  “I have come for Novan.”

  Nahrsin’s eyes widened slightly. “The historian? What has he done this time?”

  “I sent him here to help me understand the groeliin.”

  Nahrsin chuckled. “That was your request then?”

  “I asked him to see what he could learn,” Jakob said. “Is he not here?”

  “He was here, but…”

  “What is it, Nahrsin?”

  “He left the city, damahne. He went with Isandra and Jassan, and they have disappeared into the mountains. Some of Jassan’s men have returned, claiming that they were able to turn the groeliin.”

  “Turn them?” Jakob pushed out with his ahmaean, stretching it toward the mountains. Could the groeliin be turned? If they could, did that mean that the groeliin like he’d seen in his vision could return to the daneamiin?

  “I don’t know what to make of it,” Nahrsin said. “The men claim that the historian and the former Mage were able to turn two of the creatures.”

  “They saw this?” Jakob asked.

  “They were there. Their swords were used.”

  Jakob frowned before realizing that the swords must have been used because they were teralin, which would help augment the abilities of those attempting to help the groeliin.

  “I need to find the historian,” Jakob said. “Where would he have led them?”

  Nahrsin shook his head. “The historian was not leading them. It was the former Mage who leads.”

  The Mage led Novan? That surprised Jakob, though he should be more surprised by the fact that one of the Magi was here at all, and willing to face the groeliin. Any that he thought who might be likely would have been with Roelle in the south.

  Could Jakob find them?

  He could use his ahmaean, but would he be strong enough to find Novan in that way? Was there any other way he could reach them? Perhaps the fibers, but that wouldn’t necessarily show him where they were. He had seen that with his rescue of Malaya and Paden. He could enter their strands and see what they saw, but he wouldn’t be able to know where they were—unless they were aware of it.

  With Novan, he would know where he had traveled.

  But stepping outside the fibers and into another’s strand required significant strength and much more ability to augment his ahmaean than what he had naturally. It would require him to return to the Tower, which Jakob was reluctant to do.

  That left the ahmaean.

  “Wait here,” he said.

  He shifted before Malaya or Paden could refuse, and appeared at the edge of the mountains. From here, wind whipped around him, a cold and strangely comforting sense. He pushed out with his ahmaean, letting it drift into the mountains, stretching away from him, flowing over and around the rock.

  There was teralin within the mountains, and when he touched upon it, he changed it to the positive polarity and used that augmentation to grant him a better connection.

  Jakob pushed harder, stretching away from himself.

  The effort spread him thin, draining him nearly as much as stepping along the fibers. He continued to push, letting his awareness contact the teralin, changing the polarity and then pushing onward.

  He couldn’t push any further.

  There was a limit to this, and he had reached his.

  Jakob started to withdraw when he noted a pocket of teralin pushing him away.

  Negatively charged teralin. Jakob changed its polarity as well, then shifted there.

  Jakob stood atop a mountain peak and noted teralin all around him. There were more pockets of it scattered throughout the mountains, and surprisingly most of it was negatively charged, other than those he had changed.

  How many groeliin would be here?

  They would use these pockets of negatively charged teralin. Perhaps that was the key to how they moved, drifting between places until they found other pockets of negatively charged metal.

  Jakob pressed his ahmaean through the nearest negative teralin, changing the polarity. As he did, he continued to spread his attention outward, gradually shifting it away from where he stood. Each shift took him farther from Farsea and deeper into the mountains.

  There was something here for him to reach, though he couldn’t tell why he was so convinced of that.

  There was an enormous amount of teralin here, much more than he would’ve expected. He had thought he’d already discovered the massive amounts of teralin in the northern mountains, and thought that he had already changed the polarity of much of it, but either he hadn’t, or someone else had come and undone all of his work.

  Another shift, and once more, he came to a deposit that was mostly uncharged teralin. As Jakob began to work through it, pressing his ahmaean, and changing the polarity, he felt a surge through him. That surge was unexpected.

  Positively charged teralin.

  It was nearby, and not teralin that he had influenced.

  Jakob shifted to it, curiosity now drawing him deeper into the mountains.

  Once there, he felt that teralin around him.

  He stood on a rocky ledge, with what appeared to be caverns dug into the walls. The pockets of positively charged teralin came from within each of these caverns.

  Teralin was not found in this form naturally. It required charging, and someone with the knowledge and ability to charge it. For it to have been charged meant that someone had been here before him.

  And why here? Why would they have chosen this place to focus their energy? Why leave other places alone? The mountains surrounding this area had all been negatively charged.

  He knew only a few with the ability to change the polarity of the metal. Endric could. He was certain of that from the stories he’d heard of the general. He suspected that Novan could. And what of this Mage that Nahrsin had mentioned? Could she have the ability to change the polarity of teralin?

  As he stood there, he noted movement far below him.

  Groeliin.

  Some of the creatures were massive, but they were different from the large groeliin he’d encountered before. They didn’t have the same contorted, almost deformed shape to them. These were muscular but had taken on something of the appearance of a massive soldier. That wasn’t the only unexpected finding. The ahmaean around these large groeliin wasn’t dark. Theirs was a clearer energy, though there was a grayish tint to it.

  Within the circle of these larger groeliin, there had to be a hundred or so of the smaller groeliin. But their ahmaean was not lighter. They were surrounded by the dark ahmaean Jakob was familiar with. What did that mean?

  Had he found the groeliin Novan and the Mage had helped?

  When Nahrsin suggested that they had turned the groeliin, this was not what he’d expected. Jakob would have understood finding groeliin no longer violent, somehow calmed, but had not expected to find them with power that reminded him of the daneamiin. Then again, the groeliin and the daneamiin shared ancestry.

  A steady tapping came from inside one of the caves.

  Jakob shifted to it.

  When he appeared, he came upon a scene that he did not fully understand. A youthful-looking woman
with dark flowing hair that hung to her shoulders stood holding Novan’s staff. A ring of swords—all positively charged teralin—were plunged into the ground, and a groeliin lay in the middle of them. The creature thrashed, and its dark ahmaean swirled around it. As Jakob watched, that ahmaean was forced free of the creature, almost like what Jakob had done with Raime.

  That wasn’t what was taking place here. This was something else. He focused on the ahmaean, and on the energy used by the Mage. She tapped the staff, and ahmaean poured from it, swirling around her and radiating from the swords, and from there, out to the walls of the cave.

  She used the teralin of the cave against the groeliin.

  It was something like what he had done with Jostephon, the same way that he had needed to hold the Mage captive so that he could undo his connection to the dark ahmaean.

  As he watched, he noted that the ahmaean shifted.

  It happened gradually. At first, it was the dark, inky black ahmaean that he associated with the groeliin, and gradually, it began to fade, losing much of that color and taking on the grayish, almost translucent coloring that he saw from the groeliin in the clearing outside the cave.

  “Did it work?” he heard Novan ask.

  “I think so. The pressure is gone.”

  Jakob was tempted to remain hidden, obscured by ahmaean, but was much too curious to do so. He wanted to know exactly what it was that he was seeing.

  He stepped forward, revealing himself.

  A man gasped near him, and he turned to see a muscular Antrilii warrior near the wall of the cave. He glanced from Jakob to the woman, his eyes widening.

  “Isandra,” the man said.

  “What is it, Jassan?”

  Jassan. That was the name Nahrsin had mentioned. This warrior must have traveled with Nahrsin when they’d faced the groeliin in the south. He hadn’t expected to find any Antrilii here, working with the groeliin, attempting to restore them. With everything the groeliin had done to the Antrilii over the years, that was possibly the last thing Jakob would have expected.

  “He is here.”

  “Who is here? The groeliin has…”

  She trailed off as she looked back, realizing that Jakob stood near the entrance to the cave.

  “Novan. It seems your damahne has come.”

  “My—” Novan looked up, turning to see Jakob standing behind him. A wide smile spread across his face. “Jakob. How did you find me?”

  Ignoring Novan’s question, he said, “It’s true. You have turned the groeliin.”

  Novan smiled tightly. “I haven’t done this. This is the work of Isandra. She is much more capable with turning them. I think it has something to do with the way her abilities returned to her.”

  “How?” Jakob asked.

  “It’s the same as changing the polarity of teralin,” Isandra said. “Or, it’s near enough the same for it not to make much of a difference.”

  Jakob studied the groeliin lying in the middle of the ring of swords. As he watched, the creature no longer thrashed, no longer made any noise as it had before, the hissing and screaming now ended.

  With the gray haze of ahmaean around the creature, he could almost imagine this groeliin with the others from the vision where he had seen the origin of the groeliin, where the daneamiin had tormented the creature. That ahmaean was much like what he detected now.

  If changing the polarity of groeliin was like changing teralin, was it something that he could do?

  It required significant augmentation of ahmaean, but with enough teralin around him, he suspected he could do the same as what Isandra and Novan had done with the groeliin.

  “I saw the groeliin down in the valley. How many have you restored?” he asked.

  “Almost all of the large ones. Those that we’ve helped are containing the others.”

  “Show me,” Jakob said to Novan. Novan glanced at Isandra and shrugged. The historian guided him to the end of the cave and pointed down toward the valley floor far below them.

  “Most of the ones we have left to change are the typical groeliin, the kind I imagine you’re familiar with?”

  “Yes. I see the smaller ones still have the dark ahmaean. But many of the larger ones… You have changed those?” Jakob asked.

  “Yes. Changing them all will take time, but we are making our way.”

  Jakob shifted, dropping to the floor of the valley. From here, he saw a circle of the massive groeliin, each of them with the lighter ahmaean, not the darkness of those they held within the circle.

  All of the teralin around him had the positive polarity, mostly because he had changed the pockets he’d found along the way. Was there anything that he could do to change the groeliin the same way that Isandra had?

  Jakob pulled upon his ahmaean and forced it into the teralin around him, augmenting it. He took this connection to the teralin and pushed it upon the nearest of the small groeliin.

  Jakob had plenty of experience changing the polarity of teralin, but this was a heavy resistance. This taxed him in ways that changing the polarity of teralin did not.

  He thought he understood why Novan had been the one to change the polarity of the metal, leaving Isandra to work on the groeliin.

  But Jakob had more power—and connection to ahmaean—than either of them.

  He pushed it upon the groeliin, forcing it. As he did, he began to feel the shifting.

  As Jakob continued to push, an explosion of power came from within the groeliin, and the negative energy within the creature shifted.

  Jakob didn’t hesitate. He began working his way through the groeliin. Now that he knew how much force it took, he was able to stretch his ahmaean into more and more teralin around him, and use it to push on the groeliin. With each one that he changed, he felt a growing sense of excitement. Could all of the groeliin be saved?

  He reached one of the larger creatures, and though there was more resistance, Jakob had experience now. He thought that he knew exactly what it would take to change this groeliin.

  The creature hissed and tried to attack.

  He grabbed for his sword instinctively.

  Ahmaean poured from it, into the rock around him, and exploded through the groeliin, and each of the groeliin remaining.

  There was a roar, and then silence.

  Jakob released his connection.

  All of the groeliin lay unmoving.

  Had he killed them? That would have been a mistake, especially now that he understood that it was possible to change them, and to help them.

  One of the groeliin moved.

  No. He hadn’t killed them.

  What he had done was change them.

  “Well. That’s one way to do it,” Novan said behind him.

  Jakob sighed and turned back to the historian and smiled.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The fire crackled with soft energy, and smoke swirled into the mountain air, casting a pleasant warmth. It pushed back some of the stink of the groeliin, though there was less of it than Jakob would have expected from the creatures, especially with as many as surrounded him. A sliver of moon was visible through clouds overhead, and wind gusted around him.

  “How long have you been here?” he asked Novan.

  The historian sat across the fire from him, one hand gripping his staff, and Jakob noted the way that he pushed ahmaean into it, letting the teralin in it augment his ability. Was there something Novan was concerned about? Did he fear being around Jakob, or was it the groeliin that he feared, and the fact that they were here?

  “A few days. We restored two groeliin after an attack and followed them here.”

  “Why here?” Jakob asked.

  “Because this was their home,” Novan said.

  The caves made more sense to Jakob now. “Who was the one to discover the groeliin could be changed like this?”

  “Isandra has experience with the groeliin,” Novan said, nodding to the Mage who sat separate from the fire. The Antrilii sat next to her, and Jakob
noted that they held hands. That surprised him.

  “What was her experience?”

  “She discovered that the groeliin could feed on positively charged teralin just as well as they could on the negatively charged teralin and that when they do so, they lose the anger.”

  “Which is what we suspected,” Jakob said.

  “We suspected,” Novan said. “But she discovered something else.”

  Jakob studied Isandra. She was young, but there was an air of confidence to her. What kind of Mage had she been when she had been in Vasha? Had she been a contemporary of Roelle? If so, why was she not with her and the other Magi warriors? Why would she have come to the Antrilii lands?

  “What else did she discover?”

  “A way to speak to the groeliin.”

  Jakob’s breath caught. “She can speak to the groeliin?”

  “As can I,” Novan said. He flashed a smile. “For years, the Guild has suspected the groeliin had a way of speaking to each other, but none of us had ever been able to get close enough to the groeliin to study them, let alone attempt to learn any language they might speak.”

  “How did Isandra learn this?”

  “Accidentally, I suspect. There is a connection forged between these creatures when they are shifted,” Novan said.

  Jakob arched a brow. “Shifted?”

  Novan shrugged. “It’s the only term that seems to fit. They are shifted from the darkness and brought away from it. The groeliin tell us that their anger is removed. That we give them peace.”

  Jakob smiled to himself at the term. It fit as much as anything. “There is something about the groeliin that you should know.”