The Last Conclave (The Lost Prophecy Book 6)

by D. K. Holmberg

  Novan watched him, saying nothing. Dendril stared at the mountains, as if searching for answers. Neither bothered him as he searched for whether he could probe into the teralin and change the polarity of it.

  Jakob would have to look back along the fibers.

  He turned his ahmaean inward and searched back along the fibers.

  Jakob worked quickly, not wanting to linger too long in the past. He needed answers, which meant that he had to hurry. If he stayed in this groeliin territory too long—and if he pressed too much upon the teralin—he ran the risk of others knowing that he was here. He didn’t know who else might be here, and who else might be paying attention to him, but if they discovered that he intended to reverse the polarity of the teralin, he suspected he would be in for a fight.

  Could that pocket of teralin be the reason that all the groeliin had been here?

  If this were another breeding ground, it would explain why Jostephon had come here.

  And gave him even more reason to attempt to reverse it.

  As he looked along the fibers, he saw memories of teralin. Jakob focused his search on what he could find of the strange metal, borrowing snippets from as many damahne as he could along the fibers, wanting knowledge and nothing more, dipping into host after host as he searched. He didn’t have time for subtlety and didn’t allow himself to worry that he might be risking the damahne as he went. He knew he would not be harming them, not by borrowing only a little of the connection.

  When he decided that he had learned enough, Jakob returned to the present.

  He understood what he had to do.

  As a damahne, he could change the polarity of the metal.

  Could he work on such a scale? He didn’t have that answer. During his walk of the fibers, he had seen damahne change small quantities of teralin, but never an amount as massive as what he detected here. There was an enormous amount of the metal to change, which meant that there had been an enormous amount of the metal for the groeliin to feed on.

  Jakob had to change what remained.

  Pushing his ahmaean out and down, he searched for the void beneath him again.

  It was there, and more obvious that it was from the negatively charged teralin. Now that he had reached through the memories of others in the past, he understood the teralin differently. There was power to the metal, but it was a power that even the damahne had not completely understood. Jakob suspected that Raime understood it better than any of the damahne, especially as he had started using it for such dangerous purposes.

  When he pressed, there was resistance.

  To change the polarity, he would have to push with even more strength. It would take the strongest connection that he could manage.

  He focused, and with another push, he pressed again.

  There was resistance that seemed as if it wanted to slide over his connection. Jakob tried grabbing for the connection, but he was unable to easily reach for it as the teralin slipped past him.

  How would he be able to hold on to it long enough for him to change the polarity?

  Was there anything in his memories that would help him?

  There might be, but Jakob wasn’t certain that he remembered the connection well enough to know how to do it on such a scale.

  He pressed out with the ahmaean, and then pulled back, drawing toward himself once more. This created a movement that allowed him to somewhat hook into the sense of the teralin, and he grabbed it.

  Changing the polarity required him to press his ahmaean through it, but to do so with a particular intent. The metal seemed to recognize and appreciate the intentions of the person using it.

  What could he offer that would change it from negative to positive?

  There had to be something that would demonstrate his intent, but what was it?

  All he could think about was the last time he had been here, and how the nemerahl had been lost. He wanted to ensure that didn’t happen again and was willing to do whatever it took to make certain that the groeliin couldn’t continue to gain strength and couldn’t harm another great creature like the nemerahl.

  There came a slow change to the void where he detected the metal that increased the more that he pushed. Finally, the sense of the metal changed.

  He pushed into the teralin. As he did, he had a greater awareness and could use it to concentrate and augment his connection to the ahmaean. The awareness expanded away from him, flooding out from him into the now positively charged teralin.

  Jakob took a deep breath.

  It had worked.

  Could he do it again?

  There were other pockets of teralin staggered throughout the mountain. Would he be able to reach them all and find a way to change their polarity, as well?

  He used the augmented teralin to reach out, stretching far beyond himself.

  Going this way, he found another pocket of teralin, and then another. Each time, he focused on his intent, using the memory of the nemerahl as a sort of focus, and shifted the polarity.

  Each time he succeeded, he was able to concentrate and augment his ahmaean, stretching even farther than he would have otherwise.

  How many different deposits of teralin were there?

  If he continued to press, would he be able to stretch throughout the entire northern mountain chain? How many had the groeliin—or whoever had done this—charged over the years? Was that why they were able to move so easily, and why they had been able to breed throughout the mountains?

  Jakob jumped from pocket to pocket, changing as many as he could detect. There came a point when he couldn’t reach any farther, and he finally had to take a break, drawing back his connection to the ahmaean.

  He blinked, looking around.

  “Something changed here,” Dendril said.

  “The teralin,” Jakob answered.

  Novan and Dendril looked over to him. “What about the teralin?” Novan asked.

  “There were pockets of negatively charged teralin throughout the mountain around us. I’ve changed them to positively charged teralin.” It had exhausted him, but he had done it. He had the sense that he would need to do much more.

  “You were able to reverse the polarity of this much teralin yourself?” Novan asked.

  “As much as I could,” Jakob answered. He suspected that if he could find a way to reverse more of it, he could deplete the dark food source for the groeliin, but he had done all that he could, at least for now. Anything more would require strength and a connection that he did not have—at least not yet.

  “How much teralin were you able to change?” Novan asked.

  “There was quite a bit. Most of it was negatively charged; enough that I had to work against the effect.”

  “How did you know how to change the polarity?” Dendril asked.

  “You walked back along the fibers, didn’t you?” Novan asked.

  “I did.”

  “When we were here?” Dendril asked. “You do it with such skill now that you can simply stand there and walk along the fibers?”

  Jakob shook his head. “I wouldn’t call my way of walking along the fibers anything with much skill. I do what I can and am able to navigate the fibers well enough that I can see what I need.”

  Dendril glanced to Novan, and they shared a knowing look. “If you’re able to walk along the fibers, and gather what you need about teralin in that brief a time, you have grown far more skilled than you give yourself credit for,” Dendril said.

  He hadn’t anyone to compare to but didn’t think that he was skilled. Certainly, he was not as skilled as someone like Shoren, though he suspected there were few damahne who possessed Shoren’s connection to the fibers.

  Then again, he had grown more skilled with reaching the fibers. It had been a necessity for him, and the only way that he was ever going to learn anything about his abilities. Without discovering what he had about the fibers, and without finding the way to walk back as he had, Jakob doubted he would have ever learned how to control his ahmaean.


  “Where did you learn about the teralin?” Novan asked.

  “Where, or from whom?” Jakob asked.

  “I suppose that both are appropriate questions. Maybe we start with the first.”

  Jakob glanced from Novan to Dendril, uncertain what answer they were expecting, and what answer might surprise them. He didn’t want to upset them, but at the same time, Novan knew things that Jakob could learn from. If there was anyone that might be able to help him understand what he was going through, and the way that his connections existed, he suspected it would be the historian.

  “I suppose I managed to gain knowledge from several damahne. When I reached back, I searched for information about teralin and maintained my focus on it. Using that connection, I traced backward along the fibers until I found several others who had knowledge I could borrow from.”

  That had been what he had done, but there had been more to it. He had used that connection to help him reach backward, and with each step back along the fibers, Jakob had searched the hosts, unwitting as they may have been, and plucked knowledge of teralin from them. An idea came to him that he hadn’t considered before. Could he do the same thing with other hosts and other issues that he wanted to understand? Why did it have to be confined to teralin?

  It was a consideration for another time. Now, his focus needed to be on teralin.

  Dendril chuckled. “As I said, I think you underestimate your abilities. I don’t recall Alyta having such facility with the fibers, do you?”

  Novan stared at Jakob. “Alyta had a different talent.”

  Jakob wished he’d had a chance to work with Alyta and to know what talents she possessed.

  Was he in any way connected to her? He was connected to many of the damahne, possibly to most of the damahne, especially the more recent ones, but he had seen and learned nothing that would make him believe a connection to Alyta existed.

  “Using the fibers to master a subject in such a short time. I don’t impress easily,” Dendril said.

  Novan snorted. “That might be the greatest understatement you ever made.” Novan turned his attention to Jakob, staring at him for a long moment. “Why would there be so much negatively charged teralin here?” Novan asked.

  Jakob thought about what he had discovered and wondered if there was more to it than what he had seen. Could it have been only for the groeliin? Could that have been the sole purpose for the pockets of teralin that he had detected? Not knowing the answer seemed like a missed opportunity for them to do something more, for there to be something more.

  “To feed the groeliin,” Dendril answered. Jakob looked over to the old man, and his eyes had narrowed, He studied the mountains, anger leading his jaw to clench. “They use the Blood of the Maker in order to destroy.”

  Jakob frowned. “Blood of the Maker?”

  “That was how many of the ancients referred to teralin,” Dendril said. “If you ask me, it is a bit dramatic, but I think it is fitting, as well. It speaks to how teralin is involved in everything we do and is a part of everything we create. It explains the importance placed on teralin, to the point that wars have been fought over it, though the last was many years ago.”

  The extensive presence of teralin beneath the ground left Jakob thinking that Dendril was right about the reason for the negatively charge teralin here. It likely had been used to feed the groeliin, and considering the hundreds of years where the groeliin had bred, it wasn’t surprising. That didn’t make it any easier to overcome.

  Jakob looked around them. There still was no sign of anything moving, and he still detected nothing when he pushed out with his ahmaean. There was no way for him to know where to look for Jostephon, though the fibers had seemed to guide him here. Perhaps they had guided him here for the purpose of finding and changing the polarity of teralin. Would the fibers care about such things? Did they have any interest in the outcome of events that took place? The fibers were not alive, at least they should not seem alive.

  Maybe what he needed to do next was search for other pockets of teralin. If he could find these locations and reverse the charge of the teralin, it would eliminate those pockets as potential breeding grounds. If he could do that—if he could actually prevent the groeliin from breeding, perhaps he could stop future groeliin attacks. The Antrilii could intervene, and they could finally exterminate the groeliin. It would require Jakob to confront the twelve dark-powered groeliin, but he would need help.

  Jakob readied to shift them away, to go in search of other pockets of teralin when he felt something against him.

  Dendril’s gasp told him that the old general felt it, as well.

  Jakob looked over to see both Dendril and Novan frowning. Both of them connected to their ahmaean, and both of them pressed out with it, using it to sweep away from them, a great swirl of power that they seemed to use to push out over the mountains, much as Jakob had.

  He marveled at the strength of the connection that both Novan and Dendril had to their ahmaean. Both were able to use that connection, and both were able to reach quite a bit farther than Jakob would have expected.

  He focused his own energy outward and around the mountains.

  At first, he didn’t detect anything. There was a sense of the mountain below him, mixed with the same sense of teralin that had drawn him in the beginning. The longer he focused, the clearer that connection became.

  Then he began to feel pressure against him.

  That pressure slowly intensified.

  What was it? Jakob listened to the sense of the ahmaean, and when that wasn’t enough, he probed into the teralin, using it as a reserve, augmenting his strength. Had he not changed the polarity, he wouldn’t have been able to do that.

  The sense of pressure against him persisted.

  Jakob felt where it was coming from, and debated shifting toward it, before deciding against doing so. All that would do was put him at risk, and he needed to know what he was facing before he did so.

  Novan and Dendril both had concerned expressions, and Jakob suspected they were aware of what he detected.

  “There’s something here,” Dendril said.

  “I detect it, as well,” Jakob said.

  “It’s him. He’s here.” Novan’s eyes had gone distant, and he seemed to stare into the distance than only he could see.

  “Him?” Jakob asked.

  Novan nodded. “Jostephon. He is here.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  If it was Jostephon, Jakob needed to find some way to prevent him from shifting away. Jostephon was probably aware of what Jakob had done, and could detect the change in the teralin. As Jakob wondered, he began to feel pressure upon the teralin, and he suspected it was Jostephon attempting to change the polarity back. He slipped more of his ahmaean into the teralin, pressing his will, and his intent, using the memory of the nemerahl as he did. It would be enough. It had to be enough.

  Somehow, he had to find a way to hold Jostephon here, if it was even possible for him to do so.

  Was there anything in his memories of teralin that would help him?

  He searched through those memories, trying to discover what secrets the damahne he had borrowed from might have known. All he could come up with was that neutral teralin prevented the damahne from shifting, but there was nothing about charged teralin, and its effect on Magi—or one of the Deshmahne. More than anything else, that was what he had to understand.

  He discovered no answer to that.

  Yet if it was Jostephon, he had so far not shifted away.

  Could he have been held here by Jakob changing the polarity of the teralin?

  Jakob thought about how the dark groeliin had used their connection to their ahmaean, and he wondered if there was anything he could learn from them. Could he press out through the teralin, augment his ahmaean, and use that to contain Jostephon?

  He glanced at the two men with him and realized that he didn’t have to attempt it on his own. There were others who had strength, and both had e
xperience using ahmaean. Dendril’s might be weakened, especially if he had gifted some of his abilities to Endric, but Novan remained strong with his connection to the ahmaean.

  “Can you detect the teralin beneath us?” Jakob asked.

  “I feel the warmth from the teralin,” Dendril said. “After years spent in Vasha, I don’t know that I would ever forget that sense.”

  “I feel it, as well,” Novan said.

  “Good. Novan, I need you to treat it as you do your staff. And Dendril, the way that you use your sword, and force your connection into the teralin deposit.”

  “Why?” Novan asked.

  “I think that using the teralin, the connection can make us stronger than what Jostephon can achieve with the same connection, especially since I’ve changed the teralin polarity from negative to positive.”

  “If he’s here, there is a reason,” Novan said.

  “I think the reason is that the teralin here has been negatively charged, and he had no reason to believe that would change,” Jakob said. “Now that I have changed it to the positively charged, I don’t know that he’s able to shift away.”

  “What do you intend to do?” Novan asked.

  Jakob hadn’t given it much thought. He needed to use whatever connection he could to contain Jostephon, but wasn’t certain if there was any way to do so with the teralin, or if he needed to find some other way to hold him in place. He had not confronted Jostephon before, and didn’t know much about him, other than that he was the Eldest of the Council of Magi—or had been. It would mean that he was powerful, and Jakob had no illusions that he would find him easy to stop, but hoped that he would be easier to contain than Raime had been.

  And capturing him would bring them closer to finding the answers that he needed, and closer to the possibility of finally stopping Raime.

  The pressure intensified.

  What he needed was to use Dendril and Novan.

  “I’m going to have to separate us,” Jakob said.

  To their credit, the other two men both watched him, neither saying anything.

  “Novan, can you stay here?”

  Novan surveyed the mountainous landscape and tapped his staff on the ground once with a sharp crack. The teralin within his staff flared with a bright light, and ahmaean swirled around him and flowed into the staff. “I’ll stay here. All you need is for me to somehow delve into the teralin beneath the ground?”