The Elder Stones Saga Boxset: Books 1-3

by D. K. Holmberg

  Then again, Daniel probably wouldn’t object. He had tried to block her out, but at the same time, he had made it clear that he understood he wouldn’t be able to fully prevent her from getting into his mind. And it wasn’t that she wanted to uncover secrets he wanted hidden. This was more about borrowing his connection.

  Would she ever tell him what she did?

  Lucy wasn’t sure she could. How would she explain to him that she had used him?

  “I can still detect him,” she said, whispering it.

  “Good. Can you take us up there?” Carth asked, nodding toward the tower.

  Lucy took a deep breath, holding on to Carth’s arm, and she Slid.

  When she emerged, there was pressure around her. It reminded her of the pressure that came from the other strongholds she’d encountered, but this time, there was something else mixed within it.

  More than that, a figure standing near the base of the tower caught her attention. It seemed to be a sculpture, not real, but then Lucy realized that it very much was real.

  “Who’s that?” she started to ask.

  As she did, the ground exploded near them.

  30

  Lucy

  Preparing to Slide, she reached for Carth, but the other woman glided forward on shadows, streaming toward the figure. Carth unsheathed her sword in a fluid movement, and Lucy could only watch. Though she had been working with the Binders, she was not a fighter, as she had continually told Carth. Standing aside as she did, she couldn’t help but feel as if it had been a mistake not to have taken more time to learn how to fight.

  She was tempted to go after Carth, to Slide to her, grab her, and return to the ship, but if she were to do that, she would likely lose her focus in the middle of Sliding, and she would need to retreat anyway.

  Besides, out of all the strongholds they had visited, this was the first time they had encountered someone outside of one. Somehow, Lucy suspected that Carth had anticipated they would find someone else. Though had she expected this?

  There was darkness swirling around Carth, but it was matched by darkness swirling around the other figure. It was a strange thing to observe, a battle of those powered by the shadows, and as she watched, she couldn’t help but feel as if Carth were evenly matched.

  When another explosion struck, Lucy was thrown back. She Slid, emerging a step or two away, catching herself before falling. She realized that Carth still stood.

  The figure was down. Shadows swirled around both of them, but this time, they all seemed to emanate mostly from Carth and not from this other figure.

  Lucy approached slowly, making her way along the cobbles toward the fallen figure. The stones beneath her feet were shattered, many of them having crumbled to dust, and it made the footing unsteady. Weeds grew up between many of the stones, most of them dried and broken, though some were taller and more vibrant, as if they had taken hold.

  Lucy forced her gaze away from those. As she made her way toward Carth, she kept her eyes on the fallen figure. It was a man with graying hair. A thick beard covered his chin, also peppered with gray, and he had an earring in one ear, the shape of it formed like a symbol. He lay motionless, staring up at Carth, gritting his teeth.

  “Who is this?” Lucy asked.

  “I thought perhaps you would be able to tell me.”

  Lucy looked at the man and attempted to Read him.

  There was resistance, but she pushed past it, the same way she had learned that she could push past the resistance and Slide into Elaeavn and the palace.

  As she did, she caught a faint stirring of his thoughts. It reminded her of what she had discovered when she’d attempted to Read Carth, as if there was something there, but she wasn’t able to delve into it. It was almost as if shadows swirled around his mind.

  “He’s obscuring his thoughts from me,” she said.

  “Is that right?” Carth took a step toward him, and suddenly she seemed to glow.

  It was a strange thing for Lucy to witness. She’d seen Carth using the other half of her abilities before, but never so suddenly and never with such power. Heat and light radiated off her, the kind of power that seemed to flood from her, almost overwhelming. It struck the man, and the fog over his mind faded, disappearing.

  Lucy was able to plunge into his thoughts.

  As she did, she paused.

  What was clear from his thoughts was that he was C’than, or at least he had been, though not recently. More recently, he had spent time in…

  “Asador,” she whispered.

  Carth glanced over. “What was that?”

  Lucy continued to dig, diving deeper into the man’s thoughts, trying to grasp what he knew, and the longer she searched, the clearer it became that he knew Alera.

  Not only did he know her, but he had worked with her.

  There was something else, though it was difficult for her to reach, as if he were blocking her still.

  This attempt was different than what he had done with the shadows. This was more like how she had been blocked from Sliding into the Floating Palace before. So as before, she pushed, forcing her way beyond the restrictions this man held around his mind. Whether it was tied to heartstone or something else, she wasn’t entirely sure.

  Heartstone.

  She made her way over to him. He lay there, looking up at her, and she grabbed at his earring. He tried to pull back, but she tore it free, ripping it out of his ear. She was probably more ruthless than she needed to be, but at the same time, she wanted to see if it might be responsible for blocking her.

  As soon as she removed the earring, she continued to focus on Reading him, but there remained a barrier in place.

  She looked at his hands and found a similar ring, pulling it off his finger. She stuffed both the earring and the ring into her pocket.

  As she attempted to Read him again, she found it much easier, and his thoughts flooded into her mind. She rifled through them, feeling no remorse about doing so. There were images of Alera, of metals, and of a cage.

  “You worked with Alera on forming the…”

  Lucy couldn’t finish. Other images came to mind, including that of a slender rod. On one end was a strange metal, and with the right trigger, the metal would burst forward, and it would attack.

  That was what had struck her.

  “You?” she said.

  “What is it?” Carth asked.

  “He’s the one who created a weapon that did this to me,” she said, reaching to the back of her head. It had been a while since she had touched the metal implant. It continued to bury itself beneath her skin, and soon would leave no sign that it had ever been there. How was that even possible?

  The man started to smile. “You were the test subject?” He started to laugh, lying there, no fear in his eyes. “I had often wondered what happened with the device. It was one of our greatest inventions. We thought it would be effective, but we never knew quite how effective.” His grin widened. “Seeing how quickly you Read me, I can only imagine it has augmented that ability of yours. What of your other abilities?”

  She shook her head. Anger swelled within her. It took everything within her power to force that anger down. It served no purpose other than to give him what he wanted. She wasn’t about to lose control. “Why?”

  “Why? If you can Read me as well as it seems you can, you should understand why.” He glanced over to Carth. “It’s because of her.”

  “She serves the C’than.”

  “Only in name.”

  “Obviously I serve the C’than far better than you ever did,” Carth said.

  “And yet you would frequently abandon your commitment to the C’than. You allowed them to gain power.”

  “I allowed nothing.”

  The man still lay in place, almost seeming to enjoy his position, as if he had no care other than the fact that they had come here.

  Lucy forced her gaze away, looking around. There had to be a reason for his presence here, didn’t there? Why would h
e be in this place, by himself, unless…?

  “There has to be some reason he’s here,” she said.

  “I’m sure there is,” Carth said. “Most likely, he thought this would be a safe place to continue to work.”

  “You know him?”

  “No, but I know those like him. The C’than have always had researchers, men and women of considerable intellect who would try to apply in a new way.”

  “Not researchers. Engineers,” the man said with a sneer. “And you speak of us as if you have no use for us, yet so much of what you have accomplished is because of what we have shown you.”

  “So much of what I have accomplished is because of me,” Carth said. She crouched down next to the man, getting close to him. Shadows swirled around her, and she leaned in. “You could have been so much more.”

  “What makes you think I haven’t been more?” the man said.

  “You betray our heritage.”

  “I betray it no more than you ever did, Carthenne Rel.” He looked up at her, smiling. “You might have tried to hide what you’ve become, but you have failed. You have allowed yourself to be influenced by those who should never have had any influence.”

  “And you have used your knowledge in a way that is no different than the Ai’thol.”

  “We have to stop the Ai’thol,” the man said.

  “In that, we agree.”

  “You don’t even understand what he’s doing, do you?”

  “What part don’t I understand?” Carth asked. “Is it the part where he’s trying to acquire the power of the Elder Stones? Is it the part where he’s been using Lareth—at least, those who look enough like Lareth—as a way to erode trust? Is it that he continues to march forward, gaining followers, making some believe that he’s a spiritual force rather than a man simply seeking power?” With each question, shadows continued to swirl around Carth, and they reached the man, but they went no further. Carth spun them around him, far more agitated than Lucy had seen her before.

  Surprisingly, she could Read fear within the man as Carth questioned him. He might try to give off the appearance of fearlessness, but having Carth this close to him, with her power swirling around him, made him nervous. He feared not only her shadows but her connection to the Flame. More than that, he feared what she would do. The others like him feared as well, which was why they had come here… and other places like this.

  “This is what you’ve been looking for,” Lucy said, looking up at Carth.

  The other woman turned briefly, meeting her eyes. “I suspected we would find something like this.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Alera couldn’t have been acting alone. She was skilled, but she didn’t have the necessary engineering abilities to create the prison they used on Lareth.” Carth glanced down at the man. “And you should know that Lareth is no longer a prisoner.”

  “Lareth was never the goal. He was simply a means to an end.”

  “You would use the one person they fear the most?”

  “Do you really believe they fear any one person?” The engineer shook his head, staring at Carth. “They don’t fear Lareth. They respect him. They recognize that he has power they need to be careful with, but they view him no differently than they view you, Rel.”

  “I can assure you that they fear me,” Carth said, danger dripping from her voice.

  The man looked up at her. “That is why you have never served the C’than the way you claim.”

  “Because I’m willing to take action?”

  “Because you are willing to disrupt the balance.” He glanced from Carth to Lucy. “Don’t let her teach you that way. The C’than aren’t about open fighting. The C’than are about understanding, maintaining the balance, ensuring that—”

  Carth leaned toward him, shadows swirling around him, violence radiating from her. “You don’t get to lecture me about what the C’than are about. I have seen the C’than misuse their role before, and I was brought into the C’than by Ras himself.”

  At the mention of that name, the man began to tremble even more. For some reason, he feared Ras even more than he feared Carth.

  Who was Ras?

  Lucy delved into his mind, but the fear radiating from him made Reading him difficult. She surged through it, searching for an explanation, a way to dig into his thoughts, but she couldn’t uncover anything. It was buried beneath the layers of emotion.

  “How many others were working with him?” Carth asked.

  Lucy tried digging into his mind again, but all she was able to pick up on was his fear. That radiated most strongly from him, surging to the forefront of his mind. Even as Lucy tried to dig past that overwhelming fear, she wasn’t able to do so. It was trapped there, and as she strained against it, she found that there was a limit to what she could Read.

  Then again, Lucy had always known there were limits to what she could Read. Most of the time, those limits came from how well she could Read, but in this case, they came from the challenge of digging past the other issues. He wasn’t actively trying to block her, but he didn’t need to. Even without an active barrier, she wasn’t able to push past the fear rolling through him.

  Could he be using that as a way to escape her Reading him? Was it possible that he knew exactly what he was doing?

  She didn’t think that was likely. More likely, and a better way of preventing getting Read, would be to force other thoughts to the forefront of his mind, to add simple imagery, to do what she had done when she had been trapped. But even then, that hadn’t been successful. They had known what she was trying to do, and they had managed to overcome it.

  Lucy tried a different attempt, focusing on the way he was trapping his memories. Was there anything she could do that would be tied to Sliding? There had to be something, didn’t there? She had used Reading in order to Slide; could she do something similar, but in reverse?

  Even if she could, she wasn’t sure it would be safe. She doubted there was any way to dip into his mind that wouldn’t cause problems for her.

  As she focused, she strained against the barrier that he held, whether intentional or not. This time, she thought about Sliding, though she did so in a way that was different than how she would normally Slide, focusing instead on traveling between places in his mind.

  As she prepared to Slide, she hesitated.

  The idea of doing that terrified her more than attempting to Slide back onto the ship without any help.

  “Lucy.”

  She looked over, and Carth was watching her, shadows drifting around the man. She shifted the nature of the shadows, and they solidified, concealing him completely from Lucy. A hint of light surrounded him, a combination of shadows and fire that surprised Lucy.

  “Can you Read him?”

  “When you mentioned the name Ras, he became scared.”

  “And?”

  “And I can’t get past that emotion now. It’s almost as if it’s all-consuming, and it terrifies him. Who is he?”

  “Do you remember when I told you I had a mentor who taught me how to play Tsatsun?”

  Lucy nodded. “That was Ras?”

  “He was my first introduction to the C’than. Well, perhaps not my first, but he was the one who showed me that there was considerable power within the C’than. I was never able to reach that power as well as I would have liked when I was training with Ras. It wasn’t until I left him that I began to understand how my power works and how it’s different from others’.”

  “Why is he afraid of him?”

  “Because Ras leads the C’than.”

  “Where is he?”

  “That is a great question. Typically, Ras finds me.”

  “Does he view you as not serving the C’than as well as you should be?”

  Carth shook her head. “Ras knows that I serve as well as I can, but he recognizes that I have my own particular way of doing so. How could I not, after everything he taught me?”

  “We came here to find him, didn’t we?�
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  “Ras?”

  Lucy shook her head. “No. This man. That’s why you brought us here, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve been looking for evidence of the rest of the C’than who were involved. I knew it couldn’t just be Alera, but in every stronghold that we’ve visited, there hasn’t been any sign of them. I had begun to think that perhaps I was mistaken, but then the rumors began to spread.”

  “What sort of rumors?”

  “Rumors of activity in places where there should not be.”

  “How were you able to uncover these rumors?”

  Carth smiled at her. “You think that I have no talents?”

  “It’s not that. I know that you have talent. It’s just that, without being able to Slide, I don’t see how you were able to get word from other places.”

  “That’s part of my network, Lucy.”

  Carth turned her attention back to the man, and the shadows began to retreat, along with the flash of light that had been there. It exposed the man again, and he stared up at Carth, his eyes wide, and sweat dripping from his brow.

  “How many are with you?”

  “You can’t hope to find all of us.”

  “You don’t think I can?”

  “I think you will find that knowing the depths of the C’than involvement will be difficult.”

  Lucy attempted to probe into his mind again, thinking that if she could reach through the barriers that his emotional state created, she might better understand the secrets he kept from them. And yet, the more that she tried, she continued to reach resistance that stemmed from the fear he felt.

  That couldn’t be coincidental. It had to be intentional, and she was certain that if nothing else, this man knew exactly what he was doing and how he was blocking her from Reading him.

  Worse, it was effective. She hated that there was no way for her to push past the barriers he created in his mind, to dig deeper, but she also hated that she felt compelled to keep pushing.

  “I will find all the C’than involved, and I will ensure that any future involvement with the Ai’thol is stopped before there’s a chance for real danger to occur.”