As she continued forward, the steady sound of the hammering drew her. The rhythm to it was different today than it had been before, the pounding almost a slightly different frequency.
“You do not need to accompany me,” she said to Lorren.
“I am curious.”
As it was his temple, she didn’t think she could refuse him access, but at the same time, she didn’t like the idea of him tagging along behind her.
“What do you think you can learn?”
Lorren smiled at her. “The better question is, what do you think you can learn?”
Once inside the forge, she paused for a moment, orienting herself. As they had before, the bright red coals glowed intensely. Heat radiated from the forge, and she didn’t see any sign of Dillon working at it, building the coals up higher than they had been before. There was nothing there. All that she noticed was the blacksmith, his enormous body hunched over as he hammered repeatedly.
She could feel Lorren watching her. A part of her was tempted to do nothing, to stay where she was and simply observe, but at the same time, she had questions. While she didn’t know if the blacksmith would be able to answer them, she felt that he was the one who most likely could.
When he paused, she stepped forward. She started to clear her throat, but he shook his head.
“I know you’re there,” he said.
“I suspected you did.”
The blacksmith grunted. “I thought we had our conversation the other day. I didn’t realize we had more to go through.”
“It’s not so much that there’s more we need to go through as there is a need for me to better understand you.”
“What’s there to understand? I’ve told you all about me.”
“I’m not so sure you have. You told me what you want me to know about you, but that’s not the same as telling me what I need to know.”
He grunted. “Is that right? What more do you think I should be sharing with you?”
“There will be time for that later.” She had already begun to think about what she wanted to say to him, and the question she wanted answered. The problem remained how much he would be willing to answer. It was possible he wouldn’t answer anything for her.
“If you’re not here about that, then why?”
“Where’s your apprentice?”
“Dillon? He wasn’t feeling well.”
“Is it common for him to miss working with you?”
“I’m not so sure that he’d say he’s missing it.”
She eyed him strangely for a moment. “Is it common?”
“No. Why?”
“Just a curiosity I have.”
“Do you get them often?”
“Often enough.”
“I saw him out in the city the other night.”
“Is that forbidden by the Great One?”
“I lost sight of him.”
“Is that unusual for you?”
“It is these days.”
She waited, letting that sink in. He watched her, frowning for a moment, and she noticed how his hand went to his pocket—likely the same pocket that held the small hunk of silver metal. There was something about that metal that she needed to better understand, and if it were possible, she needed to find it.
That might not be why she was here, but Ryn couldn’t help wanting to better understand the sacred metal.
“You might as well just come out and say it,” he said.
“Say what?”
“Say whatever you plan on accusing him of.”
“I’m not accusing him of anything. I just have questions.”
The blacksmith met her gaze for a moment before shrugging. “You can find him near the tower. He has a place where he stays.”
Maybe that was all it was. She had followed him out into the city, and from there, when he had disappeared, she had questioned whether there was something more to it. If there was nothing more, then she had made a mistake. It was uncommon, but with everything else going on these days, she needed to be cautious.
“Interesting,” she said.
“Do you intend to keep harassing me, or will you be heading on your way?”
“I didn’t realize I was harassing you.”
“You come in here with concerns about my apprentice, disrupt my work, and you watch me with a look that tells me you doubt me. I’d say that you have been doing plenty of harassment.”
She held his gaze for a moment. She could practically feel the smug satisfaction coming from Lorren, though he was wise enough to keep it to himself. He was a man she would have to be careful with and watch.
“When you’re done, I would expect you will come find me. Anyone in the tower can tell you where. I have questions for you.”
She spun and left him before he had a chance to object. When she was done, she breathed out, happy to be back out of the hot air. She made her way back up the stairs, not bothering to determine if Lorren followed. She didn’t need to. She could feel that he was still down near the blacksmith, and when his hammering returned, the steady pounding that she had become all too familiar with, she suspected Lorren had departed.
Back in the room, she sat there, flipping through her pages. Every so often she took notes, documenting something she had uncovered, scratching a reminder about something else. She couldn’t help but wonder if the blacksmith would come talk with her. After a while, the hammering stopped, and she listened, waiting for an indication that it would resume, but it did not.
She got lost in her notes, making marks in her records, and when a tapping on her door startled her, she looked up.
“Enter,” she said.
The blacksmith stood on the other side of the door. He leaned in slightly, his gaze sweeping around before frowning at her. “Is this the right place?”
“You doubt it is?”
“It doesn’t look quite like I was expecting.”
“What sort of thing were you expecting?”
“For an emissary to the Great One”—he said Great One with a hint of scorn, and she couldn’t help but wonder what sort of interaction they had, and whether this man really did serve the way he was supposed to—“I thought you might take a bit of a nicer place.”
“This has everything I need. A table. A chair. A bright lantern.” Even that wasn’t necessary anymore. She had found that she could work when the lantern had burned down to nearly nothing, though she liked having the extra light. “And access to people like yourself.” She motioned to a chair, and when the blacksmith sat, he practically swallowed the chair with his body.
“Why did you want to talk with me here?”
“I thought it was best to get you out of your workshop.”
It was a little more than that—not so much that she wanted him uncomfortable as that she needed him to be less settled than he was within his forge.
“What do you want to know?”
“To start with, your name.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Names matter.”
“Is that right? And what is yours?”
“Ryn.” She paused. Perhaps it would help this man if she shared a little bit about herself. “The Great One found me. My home had been destroyed. Everything I knew was lost. I was broken. He helped me find something better.”
The blacksmith stared at her. “I suppose you think I should share with you some great story about how I was found, but there isn’t one.”
“I’d be interested in hearing how you ended up here.”
“I needed a place to stay. I needed work. They offered both.”
“You weren’t a believer?”
“I’m not much for religion. It’s never served me all that well.”
“What has served you well?”
“Myself.”
“You don’t care very much for the Great One.”
“It’s not that I don’t care for him. It’s that I recognize he preaches a brand of religion that can be dangerous. I’ve seen it before.”
<
br /> “And where was that?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Why not?”
The blacksmith grunted. “What’s your question?”
“I would like to know whether you serve the Great One faithfully or not.”
“I serve as I’m asked.”
“If you don’t believe, then why do you serve?”
“I have a place to stay. That’s all that matters.”
That idea seemed strange to her. How could a place to stay be all that mattered?
“What about Dillon?”
“What about him?”
“What else do you know about him?”
“If you have anything to accuse him of, you might as well do it.”
“No accusation, I’m just curious.”
The blacksmith leaned forward. “Why did the Great One make you his emissary?”
“I wonder that all the time.”
“Do you?”
She nodded. There were days when she sat and contemplated why the Great One would have chosen her. What set her apart?
The only answer she could come up with was that he had seen something special about her, or maybe it was the fact that she remained devoted to him when others did not. Either way, she wasn’t going to challenge it. She was thankful she had been given the opportunity.
“I’ve learned with the Great One that it doesn’t make sense to question.”
“It’s been my experience that it is best to question everything. When you act without questioning, you are acting on blind faith.”
“It’s not blind faith if you have seen.”
The blacksmith smiled at her. “And yet, from some of your comments, I can tell you haven’t. If you had, you wouldn’t be asking some of the questions you have been. There is much you haven’t seen. How could you at your age?”
“How old do you think I am?”
“Not old enough. Not nearly old enough.”
“I’m old enough that the Great One chose me.”
“You hang on to that. If that’s what matters to you, then you should hold on to it and use that. Me, I prefer to take a different approach. I prefer to trust the things I have experienced and know.” He flashed a smile. “Are we done here?”
“I will have the answers I seek.”
“Have I been preventing you from reaching them?”
“You haven’t been helpful to my finding those answers.”
“That’s not my responsibility. Everybody has to ask their own questions, and everybody has to find their own answers. I can’t be the reason you find them.” The blacksmith got to his feet, standing in front of her. “Maybe when you’re older, you’ll better understand.”
With that, he turned and left, and Ryn didn’t even bother to chase him. There didn’t seem to be any point.
There was something about him that left her troubled, though she wasn’t quite sure why. Perhaps it was the confidence about him, or perhaps it was that his confidence seemed to be tied to his questioning of the Great One. Either way, she thought she had enough information.
At least about him.
She still had questions about Dillon. She was determined to find those answers, and now she knew where to look.
23
Ryn
Rain pelted her. Ryn pulled up the hood of her cloak, keeping her from getting drenched, but she was already soaked by the onslaught, so it didn’t. What she wouldn’t give to keep from getting wet. Her enhanced senses didn’t do her any good here.
Somewhere distantly, thunder rumbled, the steady sound drifting to her and reminding her of the thunder that had preceded the volcano’s eruption.
There was no lightning—the storm hadn’t been severe enough for that—but the rain had been dumping on them so much that she wondered if it would ever end.
Still there had been no sign of Dillon.
She remained motionless, vigilant, willing to suffer a little if it meant she would find the answers she needed. That was the kind of service the Great One demanded. Ryn was determined to do everything the Great One would require, find the answers he needed, and if it involved her standing outside in the rain, getting soaked, then she would do it.
What else did she detect?
His question lingered in the back of her mind. So far, she hadn’t sensed anything else, but she thought that there should be something.
What had she noticed when she was around Lorren?
There was a sense of the man. Even now, she thought she could track him. She could practically feel him up in the tower, though she suspected it was little more than her imagination.
If only she had a similar sense of Dillon.
There was no sign of him. There was nothing. There had been no sign of him for the hours she’d been watching, and as she remained there, she couldn’t help but think she would eventually find some evidence of him.
Another peal of thunder rumbled toward her.
Ryn shifted the hood of her cloak, just enough that she could shield herself from additional rain, but not enough to stay dry. She sat there for a moment, debating whether she would leave, thinking she had been here long enough.
How much longer was she willing to wait?
She should wait as long as it was necessary.
The Great One had taught her patience. It hadn’t been her strength before meeting him. She had been impulsive, and she could only imagine what her mother would think of her were she still alive, to learn about the person she was now, the way she served.
Her mother had wanted her to have comfort, her own life, and to be happy. Was that what Ryn could claim now?
As she stood there, the blacksmith’s words intruded. Question and find her own answers.
Didn’t she have her own answers? She had questioned as much as she thought she could and had seen much while working with the Great One, but she wasn’t always with him. There were things he was accused of that she tried to ignore, and many of those things she believed him innocent of, though others claimed differently.
Ryn thought she knew better, but then again, she thought she knew what kind of person the Great One truly was, the part of him others did not get to see.
Other questions began to roll through her mind. Maybe the blacksmith was trying to distract her, to guide her so that she would make a mistake. This was a dangerous kind of man. She wouldn’t be at all surprised if he was trying to set her up for failure.
He didn’t think much of her as the emissary. That much was clear.
The rain began to intensify.
Great. It was just what she needed to be stuck out here, dumped on by the rain, and though she wasn’t necessarily trapped, she didn’t feel as if she would be doing a thorough job for the Great One if she didn’t search for as much information as possible. In this case, that meant finding out what Dillon knew.
The rain in front of her started to fold.
At first she wasn’t sure what she was seeing, or whether it was real, but the longer she stared, the more certain she was that it had folded. It was a strange sensation, as if the raindrops that had been pounding down had stopped, and suddenly, Dillon appeared in front of her.
When he did, she could feel something change. It came as a deep sensation from within her stomach, a quivering, almost nausea, but not quite. She thought she might be imagining it, but the longer she was aware of it, the more certain she was that it was real.
What was it she detected?
There was a lesson that the Great One had taught her. He had wanted her to work on what she detected, trying to train her to observe the same way he did. It was the reason he had made her his emissary in the first place. Not because she had some great insight—she knew she didn’t, and regardless of what the blacksmith said, she was fully aware of her limitations—but because of her ability to observe and report back what she had seen. It was that ability that had made her valuable to the Great One. Without it, she never would have helped him. She never would have helped herself.
There was a faint shimmering, little more than a swirling of color around him, and the folding of the rain. The shimmering was something she recognized. She’d had enough experience with those who could travel and had seen it around the Great One himself.
“What are you doing here?” Dillon asked when he appeared.
“You can travel.”
“What?”
“Appear and disappear. You don’t need to walk.”
“Transporting. Yes. I can.”
She would never have called it transporting, but maybe the fact that he did meant he really was from the village he claimed. A part of her had questioned it, mostly because she wasn’t sure whether she could trust him. She still wasn’t.
“Does the Great One know?”
“My ability isn’t from him.”
“It’s not?”
“Some people are born with it. It’s… it’s the reason that I got in trouble. They found me with the mayor’s daughter.”
Ryn shook her head. “You just appeared with her?”
“I would have disappeared with her too, but I don’t have much strength with it. Or didn’t.”
“Didn’t?”
Dillon looked behind him, as if he were expecting someone to appear, but they never did. “Didn’t. You know, no strength beforehand. It seems the more you use it, the stronger it gets. I don’t know if I can travel with another person or not, but the more I practice, the more likely it is I can.”
“I’m told it’s like any other talent. Practice makes you stronger with it.”
“How is it that you know?”
“I’m the Great One’s emissary.”
Dillon glanced over his shoulder again.
“Are you expecting someone?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s just…”
“I have some questions for you.” She said it more assertively than she intended, and as she wiped the rain from her eyes, she felt as if she looked small—and young. It was bad enough looking young next to the blacksmith. He had something about him that spoke of age and experience and a hint of anger, as if something had happened to him long ago that he refused to let go of. Dillon was different. If she were too aggressive, she worried that he would refuse to answer her questions, and in order to find out what she needed for the Great One, she couldn’t offend him too soon.
The Coming Chaos Page 22
