The Great Betrayal (The Lost Prophecy Book 8)

by D. K. Holmberg

  She pushed out with her manehlin.

  She had been fighting with it, but there was only so much she could do. If she drew upon her manehlin too much, she would exhaust her strength faster than was wise. Instead, she drew upon it slowly, taking barely more than a trickle, but now she used the last of it, creating a barrier in front of her, a wall that she hoped would hold back the groeliin long enough to buy her people time.

  The effort of it was agony.

  She pushed through her teralin sword, using it to intensify her connection to manehlin, and screamed.

  Pain tore through her, shattering her mind.

  She screamed again.

  Manehlin existed all around her. Somehow, she could see it. She drew upon this, and forced it through her sword, as well, fortifying the barrier that she had created, holding it so the groeliin could not get past her.

  She felt them thrashing at the resistance that she had formed, but she was strong. She didn’t know how long she would be able to hold on to it, but risked looking to the side, and saw five Deshmahne—including Safran—fighting alongside her. A handful of Magi had also remained with her.

  “Go. I will hold them.”

  Safran glanced over at her. “You will not sacrifice yourself and gain the honor of the gods without my presence,” Safran said.

  “I’m not trying to gain the honor of the gods,” she said. “All I want is to give you the chance to get to safety. Keep yourself—and your people—protected.”

  She turned away from him, focusing on the manehlin, pushing out with it. She couldn’t focus on what Safran was doing but felt manehlin being used near her. He had not abandoned her.

  The groeliin continued to push against her barrier, and she fought to hold it. She stabbed through the barrier with her teralin sword, before falling back. There was no place for her to go, not anymore.

  She felt her strength fading.

  As soon as she released the barrier, she would no longer be able to keep the groeliin from chasing her people.

  Roelle sagged to her knees.

  She felt a hand at her elbow, propping her up. Selton.

  “I wasn’t going to let you die alone.”

  It had been an order, but he had ignored it. “I need someone to lead if I’m not there.”

  “Then let me stay. You’re more valuable than me.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think you are strong enough to hold them back.”

  She hated telling Selton that, but it was true. Because he had not taken the Deshmahne offering, he wasn’t strong enough to withstand the groeliin.

  “Give me—”

  Selton didn’t have the chance to finish.

  Roelle’s connection to the manehlin collapsed suddenly. The groeliin surged forward, but something pushed back against them.

  Roelle tried to see what it was, but fatigue—and pain—worked against her.

  The groeliin poured down the face of the mountain, heading toward the valley below.

  Roelle watched with horror. Her people would be slaughtered there.

  She staggered toward the edge of the mountain and saw shapes moving along the valley floor. At first, she thought they were her soldiers, but she realized they were not. They were groeliin.

  Had she sent her people to a slaughter?

  “Oh no.” She couldn’t stand to watch, but at the same time, she couldn’t tear her eyes away. It was horrific. “I’m sorry, Safran. I sent your people to die.”

  As she watched, something strange happened.

  The groeliin streaming down the side of the mountain suddenly froze.

  A loud hissing erupted, echoing off the walls.

  And then there came a flash of white.

  With it, Roelle detected that something had changed, but she didn’t know what. She stared, unable to take her eyes off the valley, not wanting to watch the end of her people but needing to watch it.

  The groeliin no longer moved.

  Nothing moved.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  As she did, a merahl bounded down the trail and stopped a short distance from her. A dozen more appeared, and then they followed the first one down the side of the mountain and into the valley. Roelle thought they might attack, but they didn’t. They crouched, waiting.

  “Gods!” Selton said.

  “Not the gods,” Roelle said. She didn’t know what this was, but it wasn’t the gods. “But come on,” she said. “I think we need to go down and see what just happened.”

  Selton and Safran both looked over at her. Both men nodded.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The inside of the cave was dimly lit, and it stank, a musky odor to it that reminded Roelle of the groeliin. She stared ahead, unable to fathom what she was seeing, or the fact that the groeliin seemed to be helping. How was that possible?

  She refused to sheathe her sword. She didn’t sense any immediate threat but wanted to be prepared just in case.

  “Is this all of you?”

  Roelle recognized the Mage Elder standing at the back of the cave, but at the same time, she didn’t. She remembered Isandra as being a somewhat older woman, not the vibrant, even powerful woman she saw before her, and Roelle would never have dreamed she would carry a sword as she did so comfortably. Then again, she would not have expected Isandra to have the massive merahl crouched at her side, either, with her hand resting on the merahl’s head.

  “This is all of us,” Roelle said. “What is this? What’s happening here?” She couldn’t shake the image of the groeliin simply stopping the attack. Something had happened to them, though she did not know what it was. There had been a change to the creatures, and she suspected it had something to do with what Isandra had done, but she didn’t know.

  “This is us confronting the groeliin,” Isandra said.

  “By doing what, exactly?”

  Isandra looked past her, and Roelle turned to study the groeliin in the doorway of the cave. Whatever was taking place here was unusual. Not only did it seem as if Isandra wasn’t trying to harm the groeliin, but she also seemed to be trying to help them. But why?

  Isandra glanced to an Antrilii that Roelle hadn’t noticed standing near the rear of the cavern. He was handsome in the way many of the Antrilii were, with broad shoulders and an intense stare, but there was something about him that she recognized.

  “Jassan?”

  The Antrilii stepped forward and met her eyes. When she’d seen him last, he had been traveling with Nahrsin, hunting groeliin along with her. He had known everything that they had gone through. With that being the case, why would he be here, helping Isandra with… Whatever it was she was doing?

  “I heard you lived,” he said. “I didn’t believe it possible, but here you stand. The gods have brought us back together.”

  Isandra glanced over at Jassan, giving him a strange look. Was that jealousy that she saw or was there something else?

  The more she stared at them, the more she realized there was something between Jassan and Isandra.

  “Here I stand. And here you stand with one of the Magi Elders and several broods of groeliin that you have decided not to destroy. I wonder why that is?”

  Isandra stepped toward Roelle, forcing her focus. “Because I intend to do everything I can to stop the groeliin, but that doesn’t mean I intend to destroy them.”

  “What does it mean?”

  Isandra leaned closer, and there was an intensity to her gaze. Roelle frowned, uncertain how to react. There was an expression on her face that Roelle had never seen from an Elder before.

  “It means that you will need to help, Roelle. Everything I’ve heard about you tells me you are the one to assist me.”

  Was this why Endric had not tried to talk her out of coming north?

  He must have known. As usual, Endric had known.

  She glanced from Isandra to Jassan before looking over her shoulder, out of the cave where her Magi warriors and the Deshmahne waited. “What do you need fr
om me?”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The ash from Oluantiin Mountain created a coating over everything. It was one of the reasons Brohmin had been pleased to have excuses to stay away from Salvat. It had been a decade, perhaps longer since he’d last come, but in that time, not much had changed. But the Conclave had existed for a thousand years, so a decade was little more than the blink of an eye.

  “We’ve been here nearly a week, Brohmin, and we’ve not discovered anything.”

  Salindra sat across from him at the table in the library. Books were spread out across the tabletop, many of them hundreds of years old, old enough that they would have been placed in a protected wing of the Magi library. To the Conclave, these were some of the newer works. There were some volumes that were over a thousand years old. A few were written in code, and Brohmin wondered who besides him knew that. Living for five hundred years had given him access to the library that others didn’t have. He had taken the opportunity to understand much of what was stored here but didn’t have the same memory as Novan. The historian had a near perfect memory, recalling everything that he’d ever read.

  If Brohmin had such a gift, he would have been much more valuable to the Conclave over the years, but his ability was not in his recollection—at least not in what he’d read.

  “We have to keep looking. There has to be something here that will help us understand this difference that the Lashiin priests spoke of.”

  Brohmin was convinced there was something here, though where would it be?

  The priests had told him of a division among the damahne, though there had never been a reported division. If one existed, it would indicate that the damahne who had served on the Conclave during that time had not revealed everything to them. It would mean something had been held back from the Conclave. Without all the information, how could they ever have made the right decisions?

  What he needed was Jakob. If Jakob could walk back along the fibers and see the experiences of the damahne, Brohmin could use that and imagined that it would help him find what the Lashiin priests referred to.

  “Your library is enormous. How do you expect us to find anything within any reasonable amount of time?”

  “It might be enormous, but there are only a few places we need to look. Only a few places where that type of knowledge can be found.”

  Which was the reason that he had chosen these texts to spread out on the table?

  There were others, but they would be less likely to contain the information he sought.

  “How much time do you think we have?”

  Brohmin offered a hint of a smile. Was she aware of his fading ability? Did she know that his connection to the ahmaean continued to weaken? Or was it simply a question she asked by chance?

  “We have all the time that we need.”

  An older woman entered, and she glanced from Brohmin to Salindra with a sour expression. “Do you really need to make such a mess, Hunter?”

  Brohmin glanced up at her. Bollah had served the Conclave for nearly fifty years, and in that time, she had come to view him with a certain disdain. Many on the Conclave did. They didn’t view him as a scholar, not the way they viewed Novan with something bordering on reverence. No, Brohmin was a tool, and his purpose was clear. He was the Hunter. That he had failed in his task for the last five hundred years had done nothing to gain him any favor with the Conclave.

  “I have earned the right to do as I need to.”

  She pressed her lips together in a deeper frown. “I’m not saying that you don’t have the right to review these journals,” she said. Her gaze then fixed on the books set in front of him before flickering up to Salindra. They lingered there for a moment, before turning back to him. “I only ask that you perform your review in a neater fashion.”

  Brohmin chuckled. “I’m sorry that my mess on the table offends you, Bollah.”

  She turned away in left in a huff. When she was gone, Salindra looked over at him. “Why do they treat you that way?”

  “What way is that?”

  “As if you are somehow less than they are. You’re Brohmin Ulruuy. You’ve lived for hundreds of years. How many of them can say the same?”

  Brohmin grunted. “It’s because I’m Brohmin Ulruuy. Were I Novan, or were I even Endric, they would treat me quite differently. But to them, I am the Hunter.”

  “Doesn’t that bother you?”

  He waved his hand. “Maybe it should, but I recognize that my purpose is greater than what they give me credit for. Besides, they know that I have the ear of Endric and Novan, so they would not dare force me out.”

  Brohmin reached for one of the books on the shelf and then returned to the table. There were several like this, several that he didn’t completely understand. There were messages within it, though he couldn’t understand them. Was it some sort of code? If it was, why would an entire document like this be coded?

  “How long are we going to be here?” Salindra asked.

  Brohmin stared at the book, pulling another like it toward him. If he could figure out the code, if he could find some way to understand it, maybe he could be of some use. But so far, he had not discovered anything that might be of value. He had come knowing the damahne were divided, having learned that from the Lashiin priests, but there wasn’t anything he had found that would help Jakob.

  “Brohmin?”

  He sighed and set the book down, looking up at Salindra. “I can’t help the way that I once did,” he said.

  “Help who?”

  He looked around, wishing the answers were easier. After all these years, he had outlived all of those who had come before him, those who had tasked him with finding Raime and serving as the Hunter. He may not have completed his assignment, but that didn’t mean that he hadn’t served a valuable purpose.

  “The Conclave.”

  Salindra smiled and reached across the table to take his hand. “Do you think that matters?”

  “It’s all that I’ve known.”

  “That’s not true. You’ve lived for hundreds of years. You’ve known many things and many experiences.”

  “And in most of that time, I have been the Hunter.”

  “And now you can finally rest. Let someone else take over that mantle.”

  If only it were that easy. There was a part of him that wanted to rest, that wanted to allow someone else to take over as the Hunter, but it had been his task and his role for so long that he didn’t see how he could give it up.

  “Or find another way to serve,” Salindra went on. “Isn’t that what you taught me? When I lost my abilities, you didn’t allow me to wallow in that sadness. You forced me to come along with you, and you forced me to find a different purpose.”

  “I didn’t force you to do anything. I offered you an alternative.”

  “Fine. You didn’t force, but you strongly encouraged that I come with you. And because I did, I found that there is much more than I ever could have imagined to the world. I have discovered that I can serve in ways that I never would have believed possible. Now you need to do the same. Find a new purpose.”

  Brohmin looked down at the book in front of him. It was the reason he had come here, thinking that if he could find answers, he would be able to help Jakob find the key to eventually stopping Raime. Learning that the damahne were divided had to be important, though he didn’t yet know why.

  “Brohmin?” she asked.

  He pulled his gaze off the books in front of him and met her eyes.

  “You’ve come so far, and you have done so much. Don’t ever forget that.”

  “If only I were Novan, I might be able to find something here in this library.”

  Salindra chuckled. “I think you’re the first person who has ever wished they were the historian.”

  “I only wish that I had his knowledge.”

  “You have lived how much longer than Novan?”

  “It’s not the fact that I’ve lived longer, it’s the fact that he remembers everyth
ing he has ever read.”

  “Everything?”

  He nodded. “Everything.”

  Salindra stared at the books in front of Brohmin. “Even if he does, you still have an advantage over him. You have experience. Use that to find the answers that you’re looking for.”

  Brohmin took in a deep breath and turned his attention back to the books. He couldn’t shake the sense that there was something here that would be useful. But where would he find it, and what would it be?

  If he could interpret these books, and if he could find information that might be of value to Jakob, maybe he could once again be the Hunter.

  That had to be enough.

  Brohmin couldn’t shake the sense that it still was not.

  Chapter Thirty

  It took a moment for Jakob to recognize the difference within the Tower. There was more light than was present in his time. Dozens of the glowing globes were placed all around the hall, and up and down the stairs leading to this landing. The air had a fragrance to it that reminded him of a meadow of flowers, though there was a hint of a coming rain within it, as well.

  Shoren hurried through the halls, and Jakob sensed an agitation within his host. It was the first time he had ever experienced that with Shoren.

  Now is not a good time for me, Jakob.

  Jakob wasn’t surprised that Shoren was aware of his presence. The damahne always seemed to recognize him. How was it that he did?

  Was it possible that Jakob had visitors traveling back and sitting inside of his mind without him knowing?

  The idea troubled him but also provided a sense of peace to him. If others were able to walk back and see him, it meant that everything he was trying to do now succeeded.

  Why? What’s happening?

  There is disagreement within the Council.

  What kind of disagreement?

  Shoren paused, and he seemed to reflect upon a tapestry hanging on the wall. On that tapestry, there was a scene depicting a massive series of mountains rising over a flat landscape. Near the base of the mountains, there was a clear lake. It looked like there were figures around the lake, but the distance and scale depicted on the tapestry made it difficult for him to determine.