The Dark Ability: Books 1-4

by D. K. Holmberg

  “It looks something like your forge.”

  He hadn’t made the connection before, but nodded. “A little. But what forge is made from this much metal? And what forge would be this small?” He shook his head and laughed. “Shael should just tell me what it does. That might make it easier for me to make.”

  She shrugged and took a bite of jerky. “You can ask him next time we see him.”

  He looked up from the table. “I’ve never seen plans like this, Jessa. I wasn’t lying when I told Shael that I’m not certain I can even make this.”

  Part of the plan made sense to him. There were a few components that he understood and thought that he might be able to make. A rectangular box of iron with fittings for a few side pieces looked easy enough that he could probably make it today, except it appeared that the plans also dictated weight, and he saw no way of making the box that light without making it hollow. And perhaps that was the point. Copper tubing that would run along one side. Copper was relatively easy for him to work with, but more difficult to acquire. Not only copper, but some of the other metals indicated in the plans were rare enough that he would have to spend time finding them. Or stealing, but the prospect of doing that bothered him. Taking lorcith from the mines was one thing, but stealing from the master smiths felt very different to him.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t, then.”

  “Shael said Brusus told him to come to me, only…” He sighed. He might have learned how to work with metal from the lorcith, but there was much about being a smith he still didn’t understand. He folded the plans back up and reached behind the table for the covered lantern before turning to Jessa. “I need a change of scenery. Come with me?”

  “Where?”

  He held out his hand. Jessa narrowed her eyes but stepped over to him and grabbed his hand. Rsiran Slid.

  He emerged in the warehouse. Light streamed through the glass overhead, giving it a filtered sort of light. The air smelled dusty and mixed with the ever-present scent of the sea this close to the water, that of salt and old fish. Rsiran felt for the sense of lorcith but did not feel anything unusual.

  Jessa tensed immediately. “This isn’t a good idea, Rsiran. We don’t know what happened last night or who was here. What if they’re not gone?” She stepped away from the door and scanned the warehouse, looking for anything unusual.

  At least in this light, Rsiran’s eyesight was not as poor as it had been at night. He touched the pocket of his pants, feeling the reassuring weight of the lorcith-forged knives he’d made today. They were different from some of the other knives he’d made. Smaller and easier to hide. He felt the connection to them and knew he could push them if needed. At least he would not be caught unprepared. Not like last night.

  “I want to know who was here last night. I need to know if it’s someone who knows what I did to Josun.”

  After spending part of the morning hammering, his mind had cleared enough to realize that he needed to know who attacked him last night. Without knowing, he would simply feel scared, nervous. All the time he’d spent fearing his father to finally emerge from it safely, he would not let some unseen person make him feel the same again.

  “But whoever was here had your knives. They attacked us.”

  “I don’t feel any sense of lorcith today. I think that we’re okay. Besides, it’s daylight outside. No one is foolish enough to break into the Elvraeth warehouse in the daytime.”

  “We are.”

  He took her hand and started between the rows of crates. “But we didn’t really break in, did we?”

  Jessa laughed, the sound low in her throat. They reached the clearing of crates in the center. Rsiran still didn’t have the sense of lorcith, not even distantly as he had last night. He hoped that meant they were alone.

  “Do you see anything?” he asked.

  Jessa scanned the warehouse and then shook her head.

  Had Brusus or Haern been with them, they would be better able to know if they were alone. Brusus could simply search for anyone to Read while Haern, as a Seer, would give them a different advantage.

  Trusting that no one else was in the warehouse, Rsiran pulled the cloth off the lantern. Blue light spilled out, adding to the dirty, natural light coming through the skylight. As it did, Rsiran looked at the crates again, carrying the lantern in front of him. Jessa walked alongside, holding onto his hand. Rsiran felt thankful that she did; at least this way, if they encountered someone else in the warehouse he could Slide them to safety.

  He guided them past the central area. From what he could tell, nothing seemed off with those crates. And he remembered the distant sense of lorcith from the night before, trying to track where he had sensed it. They wound between stacks of crates, these not nearly as old as those in the center, the writing still in a language he couldn’t read, but faded rather than gone.

  Jessa pulled him to a stop as they reached an intersection of crates. “Look here,” she whispered. She pointed at one of the crates, biting her lip as she did.

  Rsiran held the lantern out so that he could more easily see what she tried to show him. The crate looked no different from any other. It took him a moment to see what Jessa saw.

  The crate reminded him of the one he had seen last night, where the wood had been pounded in from nails being replaced. He saw splintering around one of the side panels and pulled on the edge. It pried away with a soft squeal.

  He set the panel on the floor and held the lantern up so that he could see inside, not knowing what to expect. The glint of light reflecting off metal sent his heart fluttering momentarily, until he realized that it was nothing more than pale green vases, the flowing lines clearly of grindl. Rsiran could use the metal, melt it down and reshape it, but the vases as they were shaped were probably just as valuable as anything he could make. Other than that, all he saw were a few rolls of cloth.

  Still, he didn’t understand why someone would have taken the time to open and reseal the crate. Nothing inside was valuable enough.

  “I don’t understand,” he said, turning to Jessa still holding the lantern in front of him.

  She pushed it down and away from her face. “Should I be surprised?”

  “Take a look for yourself.” He moved so that she could make her way to the crate.

  She looked inside and pulled out one of the vases, twisting it in her hands. “This isn’t valuable?”

  “Not that it isn’t valuable,” he said. “But so much of what we’ve found here is more valuable. These are pretty enough, but I expected… something different.”

  “Because it’s been opened a few times?”

  He nodded. Rsiran had come here hoping for something of an answer, an explanation about who might have attacked them last night, or at least some evidence of what their attackers had wanted. But he didn’t see anything that looked unusual.

  Starting down the line of crates, he wandered away from their usual path. Each time he had been in the warehouse before, he had come to the main door—or Slid to it—and made his way to the center of the warehouse where the oldest, and presumably more interesting, crates were stored. He hadn’t wandered farther through the warehouse.

  “Where are you going?” Jessa asked.

  “Just curious. I haven’t been toward this end of the building before. The crates near the door keep us from it. Have you?”

  Jessa frowned and shook her head. She followed alongside him, keeping a soft hand on his arm. “Never really had the need. I’m sure Brusus has explored the entire building. Think he practically owns the place.”

  Rsiran laughed softly. “In a way, he does. But you’re right. I’m sure Brusus has explored the entire building.” Only the warehouse was massive, and the crates created a maze that seemed to guide them toward the center, as if determined to keep them from making their way anywhere else in the warehouse.

  They followed the crates until it turned again. Through the narrow alley of crates, he saw the vague dark outline of the far wall. A stack of crat
es rose nearly to the ceiling here, forming a secondary wall on one side. On the other side of the walkway, the crates stacked only two or three high.

  Rsiran stopped. Swinging the lantern from side to side, he looked for an opening in the wall of crates but didn’t see one. “Do you see any way to get through there?” he asked Jessa.

  “Through where?”

  He motioned at the crates. “To the other side. This path leads straight to the wall and then stops. But there has to be something on the other side. With these crates stack so high, I can’t tell and don’t think we can climb over.”

  Jessa released his arm and made her way down the line of crates until she reached the far wall. Then she retraced her steps back. “Not that I see. No spacing. They’re just shoved too close together.”

  “That seems strange,” Rsiran said.

  Jessa studied the crates for a moment and then nodded. “None of the others have been pushed this close together. Just these. Almost like they were meant to keep us out.”

  “But not me,” he said.

  “Are you sure that’s safe? You don’t know what’s on the other side. It could be nothing—just open space like at the center of the warehouse, or it could be more crates like these. You’ve told me that if you Slide and don’t know where you’ll end up, there’s the risk that you could get trapped.”

  Rsiran nodded. That was one of the risks of Sliding. If he didn’t have room to move, to take some sort of step forward, the Slide would trap him in place. “What’s the worst that could happen? That I get stuck in one of the crates? I could hammer my way out if I needed to. But what if there’s something hidden on the other side that we’re not meant to see? What if the person who attacked us last night is over there?”

  “How would they have gotten there, Rsiran?”

  “There must be another way in,” he suggested. A part of him wondered, though. What if the other side of the stack of crates could only be accessed by Sliding?

  For a moment, Rsiran considered simply Sliding anyway. But he didn’t want to risk Jessa not knowing what happened to him. And if he were to get stuck, there was nothing she would be able to do to help him. He didn’t dare Slide with her and risk her too.

  “All right,” he agreed.

  They started back toward the center of the warehouse. Jessa dropped her hand on his arm, holding him lightly. He sensed the tension beneath her fingers and knew that she guessed what he had been thinking. She would hold onto him just to make certain he didn’t do anything she would consider stupid.

  As they neared the intersection where he had opened the crate and found the vases, he felt something touch his senses.

  Lorcith.

  Rsiran froze. The sense hadn’t been there before, but now he sensed it easily. Grabbing onto Jessa’s hand, he made certain that she didn’t move. He listened for the lorcith, realizing that it was another knife he’d forged. And close by, likely near the center of the warehouse.

  How had he missed it before now?

  Without waiting for another attack, Rsiran Slid away from the warehouse, pulling Jessa with him and back to the smithy.

  Chapter 7

  Rsiran lingered in the smithy long enough to collect more of his lorcith-forged knives. Had he a way to conceal it, he would have taken the sword with him too. Suddenly, he didn’t feel entirely comfortable leaving it in the smithy.

  “What was that, Rsiran?” Jessa watched him for a moment, and then hurried to the table to help. The few knives that he couldn’t grab, she stuffed into pockets in her pants. She started reaching for the other items made of lorcith, a bowl and the hook, but he shook his head. “Not those. Just the knives for now.”

  “Why?”

  How to tell her what he feared? That there was someone else in the warehouse who could Slide. And had his knives.

  “My knives are returning to the city,” he told her.

  “You felt another one, didn’t you?”

  He nodded. “Just before I Slid us out of there.”

  “Where was it?”

  “Close.”

  “Close? Like someone snuck up on us?”

  Someone sneaking up on them would make him feel better, but he didn’t think so. Even distracted, the sudden sense of lorcith had been hard for him to miss. One moment it hadn’t been there and the next…

  “Josun isn’t the only one who can Slide,” Rsiran said. “I mean, he even said that the Elvraeth tried to push down the ability, make it so that others wouldn’t have it. But that means that others do have it.” He looked over at her, meeting eyes that flared bright green. “I can’t be the only one, Jessa. And with what he was after… whatever his rebellion aimed to accomplish…”

  “It doesn’t make sense! How would anyone else even learn about the warehouse?”

  “Unless they’re Elvraeth.” Which made their presence in the warehouse—and with his knives—even worse.

  “We need to talk to Haern. Maybe he has Seen something.”

  “Haern won’t have Seen anything,” Rsiran said. “For the same reason he can’t see around me, at least not clearly. Something about the ability to Slide masks me from him.”

  Jessa frowned. “Brusus might know something. As connected as he is, he’s bound to know if there’s another Elvraeth who can Slide. And he can listen for word on what Josun might have been up to. He’s connected, Rsiran.”

  “But if he doesn’t know? Or can’t learn? Then what?”

  It was times like these that Rsiran simply wanted to turn to the forge, work over a piece of metal, just listen to the lorcith calling to him as he hammered away, turning a plain lump of lorcith into something else. But with this, he couldn’t. He didn’t dare let himself relax. If there was someone else in the city who could Slide…

  “You couldn’t find Brusus earlier?” he asked.

  “I told you that. Not sure what he’s up to, but I’m guessing it has to do with that crate that Firell saw on the docks last night. Nothing gets Brusus fired up more than thinking someone is interrupting his plans. You know how upset he was when he got hurt and couldn’t do what Josun wanted.”

  “I think Brusus did exactly what Josun wanted of him.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Josun had used Brusus to get to Rsiran. Unlike others living in Elaeavn, as one of the Elvraeth, Josun had pieces of all abilities. Rsiran remembered feeling Josun rifling through his thoughts, Reading him in a way that few others had ever managed. But it was the Sliding that Rsiran remembered the most. The easy way he moved, practically skipping with each step. Rsiran had never seen someone Slide so openly, though the way Josun used it, few would even recognize what he did.

  But Brusus hated the fact that Josun had used him, and that the others were pulled into his plan because of Brusus. Rsiran suspected Brusus would do anything to keep that from happening again, even if it meant hiding something from them.

  And then there was the matter of what Shael wanted him to make. What would the smuggler do if Rsiran simply couldn’t make it?

  First, they had to find Brusus. “I don’t think we can wait until tonight to find him,” he said. Most nights, he expected Brusus to show up at the Barth for dicing and eating.

  “There are a few places I haven’t checked. Maybe I do that—”

  “Not alone. I’m going to come with you.”

  The knives tucked into his pocket pulled on his senses. He was aware of the others that Jessa had and felt reassured by them, knowing that as long as she carried them, he could find her.

  The thought reminded him of something that he had been meaning to do but never got around to. Jessa had started toward the door. “There’s something else,” Rsiran said.

  He rummaged around on the long table until he found what he wanted. Buried under a few bits of iron—a run of chain, a misshapen candleholder from one of his early attempts, a few heavy pots that he thought he might use for cooking but never had—was the small decorative piece of lorcith. The lump of metal from w
hich he had forged it had been small, but he remembered how it had pulled on him with a seductive song until he shaped it into this spiraling pattern that reminded him of so many of the flowers that Jessa wore.

  Grabbing a length of twine, he slipped the shaped lorcith onto it and reached around Jessa to place it around her neck. She watched him with a bemused expression at first. After he had tied it, she cupped her hand around the lorcith and pulled it out so that she could look at it.

  For a moment, her eyes flared a bright green. “You made this?” she asked in a whisper.

  He nodded. After he had made it, he had worried whether she would like it. Lorcith, even folded as this was so that the metal seemed to flow, was a dull black or grey. Nothing like the vibrant colors Jessa preferred to wear. “After I made it, I thought of you. I’ll make a better necklace for it when I can…” Already he started thinking of what he would need to make the chain. A smaller hammer for delicate work, a smaller tong to hold the metal, and ideally, silver or gold, though for some reason, he could already envision how he could turn a certain nugget of lorcith into what he wanted.

  She smiled. “It’s perfect as it is.” Jessa didn’t look away from it, her bright green eyes telling Rsiran that she used her Sight as she studied it. “It almost looks like several colors come together. The detail is amazing.” She looked over at him and frowned. “Can you even see the detail that you put into it?”

  “Not like you, but I can feel it. I don’t think I could have made that out of anything other than lorcith.” He hesitated, fearing to ask the next question. “Do you like it?”

  In answer, she leaned toward him and kissed him.

  She took his hand and led him to the door. “We should walk. Might need you to Slide us later, and you’ll want to save your strength.”

  In the alley outside the smithy, Jessa made certain to lock the door carefully. “Maybe I should just take back my key,” he said.

  She grinned. “I don’t really need it.

  “Me, neither.”