Shadows Within the Flame (The Elder Stones Saga Book 2)

by D. K. Holmberg

  Lucy made her way down a hallway that reminded her quite a bit of what she had encountered when she had visited the other place within the city. There were a series of doors along the hallway, and she paused at them. She focused on whether or not she could Read anything on the other side of the doors, but she found an absence of voices, nothing that suggested she would uncover anything more about the C’than.

  At the first door, she tested it, finding it locked, and Slid across.

  It was a small bedroom. A basin near the door held filthy water, and a narrow bed along the wall had a person chained to it.

  Lucy trembled, remembering all too well how it had felt when she had been chained to a bed.

  She approached slowly, focusing on what she could Read of the person.

  It was a younger woman, thin and frail, and it looked as if she hadn’t been fed in days. Her lips were cracked, her tongue protruding and swollen, the skin of her face thin and gray. For a moment, Lucy thought that the woman was dead, but then she noticed that she still took a breath, and then another.

  Hesitating a moment, she feared what she might encounter if she were to Read this woman. It was possible that the chains holding her prevented Lucy from being able to do so, and it was equally possible that even if she were able to Read her, she wouldn’t want to. What might she find when she did?

  Violence. She was certain of that. It was the only thing that fit. This woman must have gone through something horrible.

  Lucy felt as if she had to know. As much as she wanted to avoid probing into this woman’s mind, she thought she needed to, if only to uncover what this woman had been through and why she was held captive here.

  Focusing on Lucy’s mind, she stretched the connection between them, Reading her.

  At the surface of her mind was a surge of emotions. Pain. Terror. Hunger. They mixed together, a combination that made it difficult for Lucy to determine anything about what this woman had experienced. And yet, there had to be something else, though what was it?

  Strangely, the longer she focused on this woman’s mind, the more she felt a different desire filling her. It was one that overrode everything else.

  Release.

  At first, Lucy thought she wanted release from the chains holding her, but the longer she stood there, focusing on this woman’s mind, the clearer it became that she wanted something more. She wanted release from life and from the pain and hunger and fear she had been experiencing.

  She was tempted to provide this woman with what she wanted, to allow her the release that she sought, but doing so meant killing her.

  Was there any way she could help?

  She didn’t know if she had enough skill to help. She had to try probing further into this woman’s mind.

  She tried to push past the emotion. It was the hardest thing for Lucy to do. It was emotion like this that had clouded her before, not only with the first engineer, but also with the second one. She needed to have better control over her abilities in order to ignore the emotions she detected. If she could, she might understand more about this woman and what had been done to her.

  As she pushed, something within the woman broke.

  Lucy felt it as it happened. It seemed as if the presence of Lucy trying to Read her destroyed what remained of the woman. She took a breath, and then no more.

  Lucy was thrown free of the woman’s mind.

  She remained frozen, barely able to move. The engineers—and others like them—had done this to her, Lucy felt certain. And because of that, they had broken this woman.

  It seemed worse that the last thought the woman had as she died was of a sense of peace.

  Lucy still didn’t know why they had held her here, in chains like this… unless it was because they had done to her something similar to what they had done to Lucy.

  Could they have augmented this woman?

  She turned the woman’s head, looking for signs of an implant. If it were the C’than, then it wouldn’t be the same sort of implant as the Ai’thol used. Theirs involved incisions and scars that covered significant portions of their faces. The C’than had used a different technique, and a different metal even.

  She found evidence of the implants behind each ear.

  The metal there was warm, and it protruded only a little bit, barely longer than the tip of a fingernail sticking up from the surface of her skin. It was circular, and as Lucy felt around beneath the skin, she could feel the metal as it had begun to press into the woman’s bone, moving beyond it and toward her mind.

  The same thing had been done to Lucy, though she had only had one implant in the back of her head rather than on either side.

  Standing away from the bed, she couldn’t help but stare. Was this what would have happened to her if the C’than had held on to her?

  A morbid sort of curiosity overtook her, and she pulled open the woman’s eyelids. She couldn’t suppress the gasp that came from her as she realized that the woman had deep green eyes.

  Elaeavn.

  The C’than had been experimenting on people from Elaeavn?

  Lucy Slid back to the hallway, reaching the next door, and Slid from there into the nearest room. Much like the last room, there was a woman chained to the bed. She was in slightly better shape than the last one, but she was still gaunt. As Lucy attempted to Read her, a similar flurry of emotions struck her. Much like with the last woman, there was fear, pain, hunger. She didn’t seem to be as far gone as the last, and as Lucy continued to probe, she couldn’t help but wonder if there was anything she could do.

  Somehow, she had to get her free of the chains first.

  Could she Slide her past them?

  Lucy focused on the chains for a moment, wondering if perhaps they were made of a metal that would prevent her from Sliding beyond them. She had found that she could bypass heartstone, but the Ai’thol used other metals that she might not be able to Slide past.

  Scooping her hands underneath the woman, she attempted to Slide.

  It didn’t work.

  She strained, trying to Slide, trying to drag the woman away, but failed.

  There had to be another way to open these chains, to free her from the cuffs, but what was it?

  Lucy looked around the room, but of course the key to them wouldn’t be here. There might not even be a key, she realized. She’d seen certain cuffs that opened only for those with the ability to control metals. Lareth was here in the city. She could ask him to help, but maybe there was another way.

  She hated leaving this woman like this, but it didn’t seem as if she had much of a choice. She Slid and emerged again in the hallway. She went room by room, checking each of them. There were a half a dozen rooms, and a half a dozen people chained on beds, much the way Lucy had been.

  All of them were women. All of them had the green eyes of Elaeavn. And all of them were augmented.

  None of them had been awake, certainly not awake enough to answer any questions. Worse, there had been nothing she had been able to do to help any of them. With whatever chain and metal they had used, she had been helpless to break through it, and she had been unable to find any way to free them, which meant that they were trapped, stuck on the beds, chained in place, left here to the whims of the C’than.

  Lucy Slid back to the main hallway. There had to be someone else here, didn’t there? Whoever had chained these women up had to be here and had to have some way of releasing them.

  As she strained, trying to come up with something, she failed.

  Whatever else would happen, she wouldn’t be able to push past the chains; she wouldn’t be able to save them.

  There was a second level on this building, and Lucy Slid to it, anger building within her. She stormed forward, moving along the hallway, and realized that this one was much like the last, with beds holding women who were chained in place, unable to move.

  With each person she came to, Lucy found herself growing increasingly agitated.

  When she reached the end of this ha
llway, she Slid inside, expecting to find more of the same.

  It was a much larger room than the others. A man sat near a desk, and he looked up when she appeared.

  “Who are—”

  Lucy grabbed him, Sliding him into one of the rooms, throwing him forward. “Open the chains,” she said.

  The man shook his head. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you don’t understand.”

  “I understand perfectly well. You have experimented on them, and whatever you have done to them has damaged them. Release them.”

  He straightened. He had flat gray eyes, dark hair, a long chin and a pointy nose. Everything about him disgusted her. Probing his mind, attempting to Read him, she strained to uncover anything about him, a secret he might be keeping, but she found that he resisted.

  Heat started to radiate off him. She understood why he had been able to resist.

  “I think that you are mistaken.” He crossed his arms over his chest, studying her. “You aren’t with the C’than, and you aren’t one of the Ai’thol. The color of your eyes suggests that you come from Elaeavn, and yet there are so few from Elaeavn who venture out into the world. If you are from Elaeavn, then it would be unusual for you to be here. The Ai’thol have brought most of them to us as agreed.”

  They had been working with the Ai’thol?

  “Release the chains,” Lucy said, her voice rising, and she struggled to suppress the rage building within her. It practically caused her to shake. She was so angry at this man, whoever else he was working with, the others of the C’than…

  Did she know this man’s name?

  She thought about what she had Read of the last engineer. The answer was there, wasn’t it? All she had to do was dig into what she could recall, grasp at that, and she could pull it out, use that knowledge and perhaps unsettle him the same way she was unsettled now.

  Faces flashed into her mind, dozens of them, all of them men and women who had worked with the C’than engineers, and so many of them without names that she could attribute to them. This man had distinctive features, and she was certain that she should recognize him.

  For a moment, an image of his face flashed into her mind, and she latched on to it, thinking of what she could recall from the last engineer, but there was no name tied to it.

  “Powerful abilities. Unusual for someone from Elaeavn, unless they have an augmentation. Could it be that you do?” He cocked his head to the side, turning so that he could watch her, studying her with an expression that made her uneasy. “Perhaps you have been augmented. Interesting. Who would have placed it? For it to have no markings, that suggests that it’s not one of the Ai’thol. They are barbaric with their techniques and fail to realize that there are much more effective ways.” He watched her, smiling as he did, and it seemed to her that he knew what she had experienced. “Yes. I can tell from your face that you have plenty of experience with it. Where was it placed? We have not been able to find the most effective location.” His gaze dipped down to the woman lying on the bed. She had thin wispy brown hair, and her cheeks were sunken. Of the women trapped here, she was the farthest along the path to dying save for the first woman. “Not for lack of trying, though. We continue to try to discover where we must place the augmentation. It seems to us that there should be some way of understanding it, and yet most of our efforts have failed. We have learned quite a bit, and seeing as how you seem to be a successful attempt, it appears that we’ve finally found the key.”

  Lucy shivered. He was talking about her as if she were not even human, as if she were nothing more than an experiment,.

  It sickened her.

  More than that, it angered her. She wasn’t about to let someone like him get away with this. She might not be able to Read him, but she could Slide him if it came down to it.

  “Release them. Now.”

  “I’m afraid you are mistaken. I will not be doing anything, but you, my dear, will be doing quite a bit.”

  Almost too late, Lucy realized that she wasn’t alone in the room with this man and the captive woman any longer. There was another, and this one had a sword unsheathed, a blank expression on his face. She suspected they were controlled the same way she had been controlled. She tried to look past their familiar deep green eyes, but she couldn’t.

  Without hesitating, she grabbed the weaselly man and Slid.

  She emerged on the rocky prominence of the island. She glided forward with him, through the barrier that barely pressed upon her, and slammed on the door, throwing the man up against it as part of her way of knocking.

  His eyes widened.

  “You know where we are?” she asked.

  “If you think this worries me, then—”

  “I know you fear Ras.”

  The door opened, and once again, Ras stood framed there. He glanced from her to the weaselly man, and power suddenly burst from Ras, making him glow with a pale white light.

  “You did well, Lucy Elvraeth.”

  “He has experimented on people from Elaeavn.”

  “I’m afraid you will find that and much worse.”

  “How much room do you have for them?”

  Ras looked up to the tower. “We have much room.” With that, he stepped forward, grabbing the man, and in a burst of light, he disappeared.

  Lucy barely paused and Slid back to the C’than building. She emerged in the same room where she had been before, but the man she had seen carrying the sword was gone. There was no sign of anyone here other than the captured woman.

  There had to be some way to get these people out of here, but Lucy wasn’t sure what it was and didn’t know what would be required in order to save them, if there was anything that could be done to save them.

  She focused on navigating through the rooms, searching for anyone else, including the man she had just seen, but there was no sign of anyone here.

  She needed help. What she really needed was Lareth.

  She Slid, emerging where she had last seen everyone else, and immediately came under attack.

  41

  Lucy

  There was nothing but violence around her. Lucy would need to act; she was somehow responsible for helping to end this. The Ai’thol had come here, and her experience with the C’than suggested that she knew the reason. Now that she had seen the experiments the C’than attempted, she was sure the Ai’thol wanted the knowledge the C’than had gathered.

  The images of the women filled her mind. It was all she could do to try to move beyond what had happened, and the way that the C’than had used those women, and the longer she was here, the angrier she became.

  She did her best to ignore that anger, to suppress that irritation, but the knowledge that those women were still trapped and in pain filled her with a shaking rage.

  A pair of Ai’thol neared her.

  She was in the middle of a narrow street, buildings rising up on either side, all of them made of wood, and two stories at least. They had peaked roofs that stretched high overhead, casting shadows along the street. There weren’t others out, and because of that, she debated how she would handle this.

  The easiest answer was simply Sliding away. She didn’t have to confront the Ai’thol. They weren’t holding her here, and there was no way they could.

  Yet she didn’t want to run. Running meant leaving behind the women within those rooms. She knew it was foolish to think like that, but it didn’t change the fact that she couldn’t help but feel as if she would be abandoning them if she ran.

  Ai’thol like this had been working with the C’than.

  The Ai’thol had brought the C’than the subjects.

  With the anger she felt, the only thing she saw when the Ai’thol came was enemies.

  She wasn’t a fighter. That much had become increasingly and almost painfully clear the longer she had been gone, knowing there was no way for her to withstand an attack on her own. Despite that, there was something she could do.

  Her enhanced abilities had ch
anged her, and the longer she worked with them, the better she began to understand just how much they had changed her. Carth had wanted her to work with them, to get a sense of just how much she could do, and despite that, she had never pushed herself nearly as much as she should. That was now to not only her disadvantage, but the disadvantage of the people she wanted to help.

  That had to stop now.

  She had Pushed on the Ai’thol before, but now she would use them.

  She felt no remorse at thinking like that. Perhaps she should. Perhaps she needed to think of the Ai’thol as something else, but all she could think about was how many had been hurt because of the Ai’thol, including the women who deserved better. It was up to her to find a way to help them.

  Pushing was the only thing she thought she could do. The more she Pushed, the easier it became. The sense of the Ai’thol was there, and she was able to dip into their minds the same way as she had with others—not Reading them but rather forcing herself upon them. There was no reason to hesitate.

  She reached into the mind of the Ai’thol, digging into it as she focused on him. She forced her way in, taking his resistance and overpowering it.

  She wasn’t going to let him escape from what she would do.

  It was difficult to take over his mind, to reach in and grab at his thoughts, but as she did, she found that she could use him.

  Lucy Pushed a single thought mixed with an image. Attack.

  The Ai’thol turned to the other, raising his sword, and began to fight. The suddenness of the attack was jarring, and at first Lucy didn’t know what abilities either of them had. From what she’d seen, all of the Ai’thol had been granted abilities, and considering the scars she saw on these men, she suspected that these two were no different.

  The other reacted, but he was a step slower. He brought his sword around, but the Ai’thol Lucy had Pushed on focused on the command she had given. It wasn’t that she was in full control of him. It was that she had suggested something to him, a command, and he was compelled to follow it, to fulfill the request she placed within it.