He stepped back, eyeing the stones. Had the one he had chosen to push been like that in his vision? Had he recognized where it was supposed to be and managed to replace it?
That seemed impossible, but then again, so was the idea that he had met a goddess, and that she had gifted him with the remainder of her power. Much of what he’d experienced over the last few months was thought impossible.
“Did you sense that shift?” Anda asked.
Jakob nodded. “You could feel it as well?”
“There is something about the stones. Power remains here that I suspect is tied to when the damahne still walked these lands.”
If the power of the damahne could still be found here, could he find answers as well? That was all he cared about now. He wanted to understand what he was, and what Alyta had wanted him to discover.
Jakob started toward the next stone, hesitating as he reached out his hands. If he felt the same, would it react in the same way? If each stone needed to move back into the circle that he'd seen in his vision, would he somehow unlock some secret?
If it were that simple, why wouldn't Alyta have told him?
Perhaps it was not. Perhaps there was more to it than that, and perhaps she only wanted him to come here as a start, a way to remember his visions, perhaps even to have another. Maybe it would force him to walk backward along the fibers to reach for his ancestors.
He settled his hands on the stone and felt steady vibration within once more. He took a deep breath, meeting Anda's gaze, then pushed.
Chapter Two
The last stone required little pushing. When complete, the circle of boulders Jakob remembered from his visions had appeared. Power filled the clearing, leaving a thick trail of ahmaean around everything.
“What do you think will happen?” Jakob asked.
Anda stood in the center of the clearing, her arms stretched out and her eyes closed, as she rocked in place. The ahmaean she possessed stretched out from her. It reminded him of how the gods had used the ahmaean in his visions. Hers streamed out and touched each of the stones, before retreating to her.
Anda shook her head. “I don't think I’m meant to unlock whatever secret is stored here.”
“What makes you think there's any secret here?”
“Because I can feel the power contained. There is suppressed strength here that has bubbled up now that you have shifted these stones.”
Jakob joined her in the center of the clearing. Where the stones had been, the ground seemed to recover, like the grasses sought to reclaim the bare earth, happy for their release.
Why had the damahne moved the stones?
They had to have been the ones to do it, didn't they?
Jakob suspected he could move them back out of alignment once again using only his ahmaean. But for what purpose?
If the damahne had moved these stones, there was some reason to it that Jakob still did not understand. As he stood in the center of the clearing, he could not only see the ahmaean, but he could feel power.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It is unusual. I feel something, but I'm not certain. I can tell that power has been unlocked here, but more than that…” She shook her head. “I can tell nothing more than that.”
“It's a ring of power. The ring of ahmaean. It presses upon us in the center of this circle.”
“What does it tell you?”
Jakob smiled. “The ahmaean doesn't tell me anything.”
Anda touched his chest, and the familiar sense of relaxation washed through him. “It is always there, and always available to you. All you have to do is focus on it. The ahmaean will tell you what it wants.”
“You sound like you believe it’s something alive.”
“The ahmaean is not only alive; it is life.”
“And how do the damahne use that power?”
“Only a damahne can tell you how.”
“And how do you use it?”
“I can… pull myself… and pull power… along the connections between things. Those connections allow me to reach for a different kind of power than I could otherwise.” She smiled at him, sadly. “I do not think it is the same for the damahne.”
There had to be an answer for him here, something that would help him understand why the stones had been moved. If he could only understand, he could find whatever secret Alyta and the damahne had locked here.
Jakob pressed upon the stones with ahmaean, stretching it away from him.
It forced him to split it into a dozen different streams. He used his connection to their stones, to what he could feel around him, and used that power to reach the stones.
Power shifted.
The sense of it came through the ahmaean.
It had been pushing against him, pushing against his ahmaean, but as Jakob thrust outward, that power eased and changed direction. Suddenly, the ring of ahmaean no longer pressed inward, it pressed outward.
The ground rumbled.
Jakob thought himself imagining it, but Anda turned to him and grabbed his hand, her exotic eyes watching him, a calm sense of understanding and relaxation within her.
“What did you do, Jakob Nialsen?” she asked softly.
“I…” He wasn't entirely certain how to answer. What had he done?
He had shifted the ahmaean, but that had been it. Could shifting the ahmaean really have changed things so much that he could feel the way the power changed direction?
A circle in the center of the clearing began to form.
It was almost a perfect circle, a band of white light that glowed brightly. Jakob wouldn't have seen it if not for the fact that he was standing in the midst of it. The grass practically concealed it. The ground continued to rumble for a moment before subsiding.
He shifted.
Jakob had no other way to describe what happened. They were standing in the center of the clearing, the stones repositioned in the circle, and ahmaean pressing out into the forest, and the strange ring of white glowing around him. And then they were not.
He was in a dark chamber. It took him a moment for his eyes to adjust, but he felt the same pressure upon his senses that he felt while in the Forest. Jakob pressed his ahmaean outward, doing much as he had in the clearing with the stones, and light surged around him, streaking through lines in the walls.
They stood in a massive cavern, almost a cave, but the walls were perfectly smooth, and it was more like a room, part of some massive palace.
“Where are we?” he asked Anda.
“I don't know. This is a place of the damahne, though.”
“How do you know?”
“The walls. You have provided the power necessary to light them. Only the damahne had that ability. They and those descended most directly.”
“What does that mean?”
She stepped away from him, not answering.
Jakob looked around, studying the walls. This trace of white light seemed to twist through the walls, not in the same smooth fashion that he saw from the formation of the walls themselves. These were streamers of white, patterns that flowed through the rock. When he touched them, he found them warm, almost hot. It was not unpleasant, only unexpected.
Power thrummed against his hand, and he held it there, feeling the pressure pulsing against him.
Anda made her way farther into the cavern.
Jakob stepped forward, following her. As he did, he stepped out of another circle, one that seemed a match to the one above—or wherever he had been. A ring of soft white light surrounded him and began fading as he made his way along the cavern.
Anda trailed her fingers along the warm stone, a hint of a smile upon her face.
“What is it?” Jakob asked.
“The damahne had many places like this before they disappeared. I never expected to see one, let alone two.”
“What do you mean two?”
“The Tower. And now here. Many were destroyed, lost to time. There are likely others, but I'm not certain I could find them any more easil
y than I could find this place.” She looked up at him. “Without you, I don't think I ever would have seen this place.”
“Is this what Alyta wanted me to see?”
“She might have wanted you to come here so that you could find a place of your ancestors. These places have been lost for centuries. I don't know how much you will learn here, but perhaps, this can help you find a part of your past.”
“You mean that it could help me find my way along the fibers.”
She held his gaze and nodded. “Along the fibers. Trace them back to your ancestors. All of that is possible, Jakob Nialsen, now that Alyta has awoken you.”
Jakob looked around the room, wondering what Alyta had hoped he’d find here. This had to be the place she had intended for him to come when she’d sent him from the Tower to find a place of the damahne.
Anda watched him, an unreadable expression on her face. “We don’t have to remain here. There are other places you can go to attempt to understand what it means that you are descended from the damahne.”
Jakob looked around the room. What he wanted was to spend time in the Tower. There was an entire library of information hidden within those walls. But returning to the Tower would require an understanding of his newfound abilities. An understanding Jakob did not possess. He could manipulate his ahmaean, but he didn’t have complete control over it yet. That was something that he lacked without having Alyta—or one of the damahne—to teach him.
“This was where she suggested I come,” Jakob said. “But what did she want me to find here?”
He shifted the sword at his side. Neamiin had become his constant comfort, and he’d grown accustomed to having the sword with him, enough so that he felt uncomfortable not having it. As happened each time when he touched the hilt of the sword, he felt a surge of his ahmaean.
“She suggested it so that you could continue to learn what you were supposed to be, but I don’t think she expected you to have to figure it out on your own.”
“What choice do I have? The damahne are gone. Lost. Whatever influence Alyta had is now no longer. She’s disappeared, and everything that she would have done, the influence she would’ve had on the world, is no more.”
“She passed her powers on to you, Jakob Nialsen. There’s a reason for that. Much like I suspect there’s a reason she sent you here.”
“Here, but where is here?”
“We can look. I will go with you,” she said.
Jakob surveyed the room and noted an opening in the wall at the back of the chamber. As he went through it, there was a strange, cool sort of tingling that washed over him. It wasn’t unpleasant, and he recognized that there was a hint of power that came from it.
The room on the other side was simple. A layer of dust coating everything, and rows of bookshelves along each wall reminded him of what he’d seen in the Tower. Two chairs made of a silvery gray metal angled next to each other near one of the shelves. A series of simple lanterns hung on the walls, a bright glow coming from each of them.
There was no question these were similar to what existed in the Tower, much as there was no question that the people who had had been here had the same power.
Now, Jakob’s power.
He felt an imposter here.
It was impossible for him to share the same abilities as the gods. It was impossible that he now essentially was a god.
What would his father have thought had he learned of this?
Another question came to him: Was there anything he could do for Scottan?
Alyta had claimed that her search for the damahne had triggered the madness, and Jakob wished he would’ve had more time to talk to her about that. That seemed important. If there was anything he could do to remove the effect, to counter the harm caused by her reaching along the fibers, searching for the person who might be damahne, didn’t he need to do that?
“What is this place?” he whispered.
“A place of the damahne. Perhaps you will find answers here, Jakob Nialsen.”
Jakob surveyed the room, hoping that in one of the books on the shelves, he might be able to find answers. He would read, and he would study, and he would try to understand what his abilities meant. Only then could he attempt to use them, and attempt to be something more than a skilled swordsman.
At least he had time now. Raime had been defeated.
With more strength, and had he known his abilities better, Jakob would have stripped Raime of all his ahmaean. Instead, he had incapacitated him as much as possible, and had left Raime broken. He had still lived—something better than what the man deserved after everything he had done.
As he took a seat in one of the chairs, Anda sitting next to him, Jakob wondered—was this a place that Shoren had once sat? Was this a place his ancestors had come, and was this now a place where he could learn to track along the fibers, and learn what it meant that he was damahne?
It had to be.
If not, how else would he learn?
Chapter Three
Jakob sat in the metal chair, a strange warmth coming from it, his eyes drifting closed as he held the book out on his lap.
How long had he been sitting there staring at the words on the page? The ancient language came to him with some difficulty, though more easily the longer he stared. He had spoken the ancient language—at least in his visions. His ancestors had done it, which meant he could know it, if only he could reach those memories.
It was much the same as with his damahne abilities.
His ancestors had known how to use them, which meant that Jakob could know how to use them. He wanted to use those abilities, and he wanted to walk along the fibers as Alyta and Anda had promised that he could. He wanted control. More than anything, he wanted to understand what it meant to be damahne.
He drifted toward sleep, but then didn’t, drawn elsewhere.
When the vision came, Jakob was fully aware that it was nothing more than a vision… but there was something different about it. It felt real, but somehow wrong.
When he opened his eyes, he was aware that he was Jakob—but aware that he was someone else as well.
Who was he this time?
The sword blazed in his hand, brilliantly white on one side but devastatingly black on the other. Neamiin was a powerful blade, one Niall was still uncertain he deserved. He recognized the power—and the sacrifice—that had gone into its making. Would he be worthy of it?
Niall. My great-father.
A line of men approached on horseback. It was a cloudless day, but the sky was otherwise gray. The air smelled of rain that never came. The steady drumming he heard suggested thunder—or the pounding of horses’ hooves. Niall was uncertain which it was.
He was exhausted, his body aching from several days in the saddle. He was tired of fighting, tired of killing, and no longer certain when it would be over. Somehow, he was assigned the task of ending the war, though he no longer knew how he would accomplish it. There had been a time when he’d been certain of what was asked of him, though that was a time when Sharna had come to him, and had given him his blade.
Did he even deserve it any longer?
Niall left his sword sheathed, knowing that if he didn’t, if he unsheathed, bloodshed would follow. He had been responsible for too much bloodshed over the last few weeks, so much so that he no longer wanted any part of it.
The nearest rider hailed him as he slowed his horse.
Niall recognized him. Peter was a skilled swordsman, one who once would’ve posed a significant challenge to him, but who no longer did. Few men challenged him. Others, those who had additional gifts—warriors—did present a challenge to him still. It was why Niall had chosen to run.
“We are to take you back,” Peter said.
Niall glanced at the line of men, counting the men on horseback. “Seven of you for me?”
“Seven of us so that at least one of us brings you back,” Peter said.
Niall considered his options. He could fight, and likely, he
would defeat most of them, but seven was simply too many for him to overcome. More than likely, he’d die in the attempt. He didn’t fear death, not as so many did, but it wasn’t his time. The task assigned to him was not yet completed.
“And if I fight?” he asked.
Peter shook his head. “Don’t do that, Niall.”
Niall took a deep breath, composing himself. No, he couldn’t attack Peter, not when the man was doing nothing more than what he’d been commanded. Niall, on the other hand, had a greater purpose, one he still struggled to comprehend, though less and less with each passing day. The violence that he’d witnessed was nothing compared to what would come if he failed.
“Who has asked you to bring me back?”
“Raime has requested you return.”
Raime. The man was skilled, and powerful.
Niall didn’t know whether to trust him or to fear him. He certainly had the ear of those with power, and had managed to convince more than one king to listen. That in itself was a gift. Niall had failed at gaining similar attention. Each king he approached had simply sent him away.
“What does Raime want to do with me?”
“I can’t promise your safety,” Peter said.
Niall grunted. “No, I suppose you can’t. Much as I suppose you are only doing what you were asked,” he said.
“Just come quietly, so that the rest of these men may return to their families.”
Families. Niall thought about his family. His beautiful Sasha, months since he’d seen her. Had she had the baby yet? She would have been due any time, but he hadn’t been able to remain, not knowing what he did, not knowing what needed to happen. That much had been made clear to him. The damahne were able to glimpse into the future, and claimed that he needed to act or else more bloodshed would occur.
Hadn’t enough already occurred?
“You could tell him that you were unable to find me,” Niall said.
“Raime has ways of knowing when he’s been deceived,” Peter said.
Within the vision, Jakob wondered: Did Niall go with these men? Would Jakob actually see Raime—and speak to him—at the time before he became as terrible as he was now? Would it help him understand him better?
Twist of the Fibers (The Lost Prophecy Book 4) Page 3
