The Coming Chaos

by D. K. Holmberg

  “Out in the rain?”

  “Do you have someplace we can go?”

  “You’re the emissary.”

  Ryn glanced to the tower. Lanterns glowed within windows. “We certainly could return. My office isn’t all that impressive, and it’s lacking a hearth, so we won’t be able to warm up.”

  “Fine. You can come with me.”

  She had half expected him to travel the same way that the Great One did, but instead he pushed past her, heading down the street. She hurried along, worried she’d lose track of him. If she did, she didn’t know whether she would find him again. He had disappeared from her once; now that he knew she was tracking him, would he try to evade her again?

  Instead, he reached a door partway along the street and paused. He fished a key out of his pocket and slipped it into the lock. Ryn followed him inside.

  It was dark, but her eyesight quickly adjusted, taking in the various items within the room. It was sparsely decorated. A table and two chairs pushed along one side. A bench and another chair rested near a hearth. The floor was all stone. A single lantern rested on one table, and Dillon headed to it, lighting it.

  “Are you going to let the rain in?”

  Ryn closed the door and turned back to him. “This is your place?”

  “Being a blacksmith’s apprentice doesn’t pay all that well. It’s lucky I have a place of my own. Torry offered for me to stay in the forge, but I wasn’t interested in staying there. Too hot, you know, even when I quench the coals. I need a little bit of a breeze.”

  Ryn stuffed away the name. Torry had to be the blacksmith. She could use it to find more about him. “You could stay there?”

  “When I was apprenticed in my village, I stayed there. It wasn’t much. A cot in the back. At least it was separated from the rest of the forge. I don’t really care for the heat.”

  “You said that.”

  “Did I?”

  Ryn looked around before taking a seat on the bench near the hearth. “I could use some warmth now.”

  It didn’t take long for Dillon to get a fire going. Ryn breathed out, thankful for the warmth, and curled her arms around her. Water pooled from her cloak onto the floor.

  “I’m sorry for making a mess in here.”

  Dillon shrugged. “Water dries. Besides, there’s nothing here that can be damaged. And it’s not mine. I pay a man two coppers a week to stay here. If anything’s ruined, I’ll just send him over to the Great One.”

  She could only imagine the way the Great One would reply but realized that Dillon was joking. He smiled as he stood from near the hearth and held his hand out to her.

  “What?”

  “Your cloak. Are you going to give it to me or not?”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “Are you always this suspicious?”

  “I serve the Great One.”

  “That doesn’t mean you need to be suspicious. I’m going to take your cloak and hang it near the fire. Hopefully it will dry out a little bit. Don’t you want to dry out?”

  She pulled the cloak off her shoulders, handing it over to him.

  Everything within her told her she needed to be cautious with him. He hadn’t told her the truth. If he had, she would have known he had the ability to travel, but then, perhaps he was keeping it from others.

  That didn’t seem likely. If he was hiding it from others, he wouldn’t have done it so openly. More likely was that he was suspicious of her as the Great One’s emissary. She couldn’t blame him for that, either.

  “How long were you waiting?”

  “A few hours,” she said.

  “Hours?”

  She shrugged. “I have patience.”

  “You would have to, to wait that long. Why were you standing out there, anyway?”

  “I saw you along the alley. I wanted to know whether or not you could travel.”

  “You decided to wait for me?”

  “Is there another way I should have gone about it?”

  “You know, asking me?”

  “You haven’t been at the forge. Your master didn’t know when you would return.”

  He turned away. “I haven’t been feeling well.”

  There was something in the way he said it that troubled her. Not feeling well could mean many different things, and from what the blacksmith had said, it seemed as if it was unusual for Dillon to disappear like that. Why would he have suddenly done so at the same time as she had begun to look for him?

  “I hope you’re feeling better.”

  Dillon turned, nodding slowly. “A little.”

  Ryn studied him for a moment. His fingers twitched, almost as if he were flexing them. There seemed to be a hint of tension in his posture even though he stooped.

  What was Dillon keeping from her?

  The Great One had taught her to be observant, and she used that now. He wanted her to understand when others were deceiving her, and that was part of the reason she doubted that the Great One himself was deceiving her. Why would he have trained her to pick up on those things if he was going to try to use them against her?

  Ryn sat up, ignoring the water pouring off her. Even though she sat in front of the fire, she still felt a chill from the dampness and the rainwater.

  “Where have you been?” she asked.

  “I told you I wasn’t feeling well.”

  “That’s what you say, but your body language tells a different story. You move your hand as if to prepare to escape. You’re tense, as if you were trying to hide something from me. And there’s the fact that I just don’t believe you.”

  “Why not?”

  “With your ability to travel, you could go anywhere. I have a hard time believing you chose to come here, when you had so many other options. Why this place, why so far from where you knew?”

  “I told you about my village—”

  “Your village. It’s the same story you told others, and yet something about the story changes with each telling, doesn’t it?” She leaned forward, fixing him with an intense gaze. “You aren’t really from Thyr, are you?”

  Dillon stood up, clasping his hands in front of him as he watched her. She had thought him young, partly from the way he interacted with her, but partly from the way he looked. As she studied him, she realized that wasn’t quite right. Was he as young as he seemed?

  It was hard for her to tell. As she watched him, she couldn’t shake the sense that he didn’t look to be quite like she expected. His deep green eyes blazed as they stared at her, and as she watched, it seemed as if they flashed slightly brighter.

  Ryn sat rigidly, hands resting on her lap.

  “I told you I was from near Thyr.”

  Ryn thought about what the Great One had taught her of geography, and it was considerable. He had wanted her to know the land, if only so that she would be ready when she departed him, prepared to serve as his emissary. Thyr was far from here, near the north, and in a place that had once held significance for the Ai’thol but had not for many years. It was a dangerous place, at least according to the Great One, who had warned her that she was not quite ready to visit it. At the time, she hadn’t known what he’d meant by that, but the more she began to understand her abilities and what he wanted from her, the more she thought that she did understand. He was trying to protect her, keeping her from the dangers of places like that. Even here, within the temple, it was dangerous for her to serve as his emissary.

  Why should that be?

  It was something she hadn’t considered much before now. There should be no reason for her to fear places that the Great One influenced. They should want to serve, and the fact that there was danger anywhere was a suggestion that perhaps his control wasn’t as great as it needed to be.

  Was that the lesson he was trying to teach her?

  With the Great One, it could be difficult to know what he wanted her to learn. Part of that was because he wanted her to experience it herself, to understand aspects of the world in wa
ys he didn’t feel he could teach. There was value in it, and she had seen that herself. It meant she could study and learn, gain insight into the inner workings of various places, and in time, she would be better equipped to observe.

  “You would like me to believe you traveled all the way to the south from near Thyr, while at the same time nearly dying and needing to be escorted away by priests.”

  Dillon watched her, saying nothing. The darkness swirling around his eyes made it difficult for her to fully understand what he was thinking.

  “While all that time, you had the ability to travel. If you have that ability, and having seen it myself, I know that you do, why would you have needed the priests to rescue you?”

  “It was early. I didn’t have much control over my ability—”

  “Other than the fact you were able to use it around your home.”

  Dillon grabbed a chair, pulling it toward the hearth, where he took a seat. “What do you know about transporting?”

  “Traveling. That’s what the Great One calls it.”

  “I don’t care what the Great One calls it. What do you know about it?”

  The dismissive way he referred to the Great One troubled her. “I’ve traveled with the Great One many times. I understand he is able to transport,” she said, leaning toward him, holding his gaze, “but I don’t have the same ability. That doesn’t mean I don’t recognize what it can do. The Great One has taught me to pay attention and observe, which I’ve done in studying the way he transports. I saw the same from you.”

  “If you were paying attention, you would know I need to have traveled someplace in order to visit it. Otherwise, it’s dangerous.”

  She frowned. That was something she wasn’t aware of when it came to the Great One. Was it a piece of information he didn’t want her to have? More likely, he simply hadn’t shared it with her because he had wanted her to uncover it on her own.

  “How is it dangerous?”

  “Imagine if I tried to transport myself where there was nothing but rock. Or imagine if I transported myself to the middle of an ocean. Or—”

  “A volcano,” she said.

  His face wrinkled and he shrugged. “Sure. A volcano. Not that I’ve seen many of those.”

  He offered at least a believable reason for why he would have needed the priests, but once he had found them, why had he stayed with them?

  She couldn’t shake the sense that there was something he wasn’t telling her, and that it was important to her understanding what had taken place here and what the Great One needed to know.

  Whatever he was hiding was significant, she was certain of that, though she wasn’t quite sure what he would need to keep from her.

  What she needed was to look at it from a different angle. Why would he keep something from her?

  She was the Great One’s emissary, which meant she was his voice in this place. She had seen there was less regard for the Great One here than she had anticipated. While the blacksmith was the most open about it, she had noticed a certain disregard for her stature even with the priests.

  “Who are the priests who found you?”

  “Back to that? I’ve already told you I can’t transport myself to places I haven’t been. Too dangerous.”

  “That wasn’t the question. Who were the priests who found you?”

  He glanced around, almost as if he were looking to find help. She smiled to herself. She was sure she had it right.

  “One of them was the man who runs the tower.”

  Why wasn’t she surprised?

  “And who is the other?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I think it does.”

  “No. It doesn’t. He’s gone.”

  “Gone? Where did he go?”

  “Not like that. Not as if he ran off and disappeared someplace. He’s gone as in he died.”

  Her mind raced, trying to come up with what to say. Why would one of the priests have died? They had lost quite a few priests over the years, at least according to the Great One. Could it have anything to do with Lareth?

  “How long have you been here?”

  “The city, or here in front of you? If it’s the last, then you know that as well as I do. If you’re asking about the city—”

  “The city, Dillon.”

  The other man shrugged. “A year. Not much more.”

  Not long enough for him to have fully become a part of what the Great One was doing, but long enough for him to understand his role within the temple.

  “Thank you for your conversation.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I might have more questions for you later, but for now, that’s it.”

  She stood, and Dillon scrambled to his feet and positioned himself in front of her.

  “Do you intend to block the emissary of the Great One from leaving?”

  Dillon shook his head quickly. “That’s not what I was trying to do.”

  “I will take my cloak.”

  “You don’t have to go. We can continue to talk.”

  “About what? Do you have more you think I need to know?”

  When he didn’t say anything, she reached for her cloak.

  A part of her worried he might try to restrain her. She wasn’t a fighter, so she didn’t know what she would be required to do in order to get free. She didn’t want to have to fight Dillon off, but at the same time, she wasn’t about to let him restrict her from leaving. The Great One would be disappointed in her if that happened.

  And she still had questions.

  Everything circled back around to Lorren, though he had made it seem as if he were innocent in what was taking place—as if he were nothing more than a faithful servant of the Great One.

  What if he was not?

  That was the answer she needed to obtain.

  Ryn didn’t know how much longer she had before the Great One returned, bringing her to some other place to observe and report. It was possible he would come in the morning, or the next day. It was equally possible he would leave her here for weeks. He was unpredictable, and most of the time it didn’t matter. Eventually, he would come for her. He always did.

  When she grabbed her cloak, pulling it off, she shook it, feeling a bit of moisture still present on it. It was drier than it had been, and she was thankful that Dillon had been willing to start the fire, giving her an opportunity to warm herself in front of the hearth. It was an unexpected kindness from him, though he was still keeping something from her. Maybe it was nothing more than the fact that he could travel. There was danger in others being able to travel whom the Great One didn’t know about.

  “That’s it?”

  “For now,” she said. She backed toward the door, continuing to watch him. “If I need you again, I’ll send word.”

  Reaching the door, she pulled it open, stepping back out into the rain and letting out a sigh of relief. For whatever reason, Dillon had made her nervous. It was the same way the blacksmith had made her feel.

  That couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?

  And yet, the one person who hadn’t made her nervous was the one she now questioned.

  It was time for her to visit with Lorren.

  24

  Ryn

  Wind whistled around her at the top of the tower, and Ryn stood staring outward, looking at the city spread around it. The view really was quite nice, and as she took it in, she couldn’t help but feel as if there was a sense of connection to the city itself. This wasn’t her city—at this point, Ryn no longer knew what her city was—but it was a place where she felt the connections.

  It stirred within her, a mixture of her ability to see along with what she could hear and smell. Her enhanced senses triggered a very different perception of this city than she’d had when she first had come.

  Her fingers found the back of her head, running along the blessing. It was circular, but there were irregularities along the edge, grooves that she often traced. The metal itself was slightly warm,
though not unpleasantly so. It was as if her own body had warmed it, and yet it seemed even warmer than the rest of her. The longer it was there, the smaller it seemed to be. That didn’t make much sense to her, but she was trained to observe, and in this case, her training had shown her that it seemed to be different than it had been before.

  As she felt along the surface of the blessing, she couldn’t help but wonder why it would be changing. It was one of the things she thought she could ask the Great One when he returned, and yet he had been gone now for quite some time. It had already been longer than his usual departure. Then again, it was possible that he knew she was struggling to find answers and was giving her the opportunity to succeed. If so, she should be grateful for it.

  From the top of the tower, Ryn watched children racing along the street, chasing a small animal—possibly a dog or a cat, the size and her distance making it difficult to tell—and laughing. The sound of their joyful voices drifted to her ears, and she pushed away the swell of emotion that flooded into her.

  “You asked to see me.”

  Ryn turned and nodded to Lorren. The priest stood at the entrance of the stairs, his hands clasped in front of him, his dark robes draped over his body. She studied his face for a moment, searching his eyes for any sign of green.

  There was none.

  Then again, when she looked in a mirror, she didn’t have any green in her eyes. Hers were pale, almost blank, and yet she knew where she had come from. She should have green eyes much like Dillon.

  “I did want to see you.”

  Lorren approached, joining her at the railing looking down over the city. She couldn’t help but think of when the Great One had been here, standing alongside her as she looked out at the city. Lorren was nothing like the Great One, and though she suspected he wished for that sort of power, he would never rival the other man.