The other two were different. There was the man with the blond hair. He had a muscular build, larger than Dillon, but not quite as large as the blacksmith from Dreshen. He was tall, but the cut of his cloak was unusual. It swept off to the side, an angled appearance to it, and he wore a sword sheathed.
Her gaze swept over the sword, noting the curve to it. She’d seen swords like that before. Neelish. It indicated skill, which meant that if he were to attack, they would be in danger. The sellswords of Neeland were incredibly talented, and the Great One often spoke highly of them, remarking on how he’d hired them for their service.
That left the third man. With his dark hair, it was difficult to make out any features about him. It seemed almost as if darkness swirled around him.
Her breath caught. She had heard others described as having such an ability but hadn’t expected to come across anyone from Ih. She’d thought that place destroyed, and the people from there gone. The dark cloak he wore took on a different meaning if that was the case.
Shadows.
Perhaps Dolan had been right.
Then again, it was possible the Ai’thol were trying to make inroads with Neeland and the remnants of Ih. Without knowing either way, she didn’t feel comfortable making a decision and judging.
The Great One would be disappointed if she were to judge such a thing immediately, without taking the time to better understand.
“As I said, I am the emissary of the Great One, Olandar Fahr. I have come here on his behalf.”
That wasn’t entirely true, but she doubted the Great One would mind that she made such a claim.
“The Great One hasn’t visited here in—”
“Nine months.” Ryn took a step forward, keeping Dillon with her. “It’s been nine months since the Great One’s visit. I was here when he made the visit, and if you are aware of that visit, then perhaps you would recall my being here.”
The other man held her gaze for a moment. She noticed how the corners of his eyes twitched. One hand drifted down to his side. He didn’t appear to be armed, but that didn’t reassure her.
“The Great One does not often take interest in Lexa.”
“The Great One has interest in all his lands.”
“I haven’t seen that to be the case.”
“Then perhaps you don’t pay attention to the Great One.” She smiled for a moment. “The Great One would argue otherwise. Seeing as how I’ve traveled with him extensively over the last year.” She hesitated. “I believe there is a disciple stationed here. I would visit with him.”
She tensed, ready to squeeze Dillon’s hand, uncertain what would happen if they needed to escape. Would he be quick enough?
She had to think he would, and all they needed to do was get out of the palace, into the city, and then he could transport them somewhere else. They could stay ahead of any attack, though if she did that, if she abandoned Lexa, then the Great One would lose control of this place.
Perhaps it didn’t matter. It wasn’t her responsibility to ensure each land remained under the control of the Great One. It was her responsibility to observe and detect.
“I’m afraid the disciple is unavailable at this moment,” the man said.
“Why would that be? With a disciple present in Lexa, I would anticipate he should be readily available for the Great One’s emissary at any given time.”
“You will have to take that up with him.”
“You will show me to him.”
The Ai’thol hesitated, and as he did, nausea washed through her.
It wouldn’t be Dillon.
That meant that it was someone else.
Ryn pushed.
The Ai’thol suddenly disappeared.
He could travel.
The Neelish sellsword started forward, and Ryn squeezed Dillon’s hand.
With that, they transported.
They appeared in the entrance to the palace, and she glanced over at him.
“This is as far as I could take us. Something prevents me from going any further.”
Ryn frowned.
There shouldn’t be anything that restricted them from traveling any further, not unless someone was actively aware of the fact they were here.
Whatever limitations there were, they were inside.
Then again, they had walked in—not transported.
That mattered, though she wasn’t sure quite how much.
As she looked around, she considered heading out the door. This was their opportunity to do it, but if she did that, there would be no coming back.
Looking up to the catwalk, she pointed. “Take us there.”
“Ryn, I don’t know how much more I can transport.”
“You’re going to have to do what you can. If it comes down to it…”
She didn’t want to say much more. If it came down to it, there might not be much of a choice. With a Neelish sellsword, they ran the real risk of danger, the kind of danger she wasn’t sure she was equipped to handle. Neither of them was a fighter, and while she could handle someone who attempted to travel toward her, pushing them away, she didn’t think she could counter a fighter. It was better to run, stay alive, and be prepared to observe another time.
He squeezed her hand, and when he did, nausea rolled through her for a moment before fading. They stepped out on the narrow catwalk. She hurried along it, making her way toward where she remembered the disciple having been before. If Dolan was right—and if the disciple had been there and was killed—then she needed to know.
What was the likelihood that she would go from one place that was attacked to another?
Ryn hurried along the hallway. A set of wide double doors were at the end, and she paused long enough to test the door handle, finding it locked. Pulling her knife out of her pocket, she slipped it into the lock, waiting for it to shift, and then twisted. The door opened, and she stepped through to the other side.
The room was dark, and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust, focusing on what she could make out around her. It was an open chamber that she had visited when she had been here with the Great One before. She remembered how the disciple had offered this chamber to the Great One, but the Great One had chosen simpler quarters, wanting nothing more than to observe. It was typical of him. He didn’t want to draw extra attention to himself, and she wasn’t all that surprised by that.
This room was decorated with extensive furniture. The carpet alone was likely incredibly valuable, and the wardrobe near one wall had patterns worked into its face of different-colored woods that must have taken years to complete. A table near the center of the room cast a strange shadow, and Ryn made her way over to it, checking the lantern before igniting it and casting a soft glow around everything.
Dillon remained near the door, shifting his feet almost nervously. He glanced behind him before turning his attention back to Ryn.
“I don’t like this,” he said.
“We won’t be here much longer,” she said.
What she needed was evidence that something had happened to the disciple or that he’d gone elsewhere.
It looked to be an empty room. There was no sign of anything within it that would raise her suspicions, certainly nothing that would make her think something unfortunate had happened to the other man.
That being the case, she couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps she was wrong.
What if the Ai’thol hadn’t done anything to the disciple?
If that was the case, it meant Dolan was in the wrong, and it meant he belonged in the cell.
Ryn wandered around the inside of the room, looking at the wardrobe. On a whim, she pulled it open. Long cloaks hung within, the marker of the disciple’s office. A necklace dangled down from a hook worked into one of the doors.
She glanced at that necklace. It was a sigil of the Great One, a marker of station, and it matched—or nearly so—the one she wore.
The disciple wouldn’t have left that behind, would he?
She didn’t th
ink he would, which meant either something had happened, or…
She stepped away, closing the wardrobe.
“What were you hoping to find here?” Dillon asked.
“I’m not really sure.”
“I think we’d better be moving.”
As he said it, a wave of nausea began to work through her. Again, she pushed.
She had seen no swirling of colors, nothing to signify it came from Dillon, which suggested to her it was from the Ai’thol, or perhaps someone else. Either way, she needed to avoid it.
She glanced over to Dillon. “That wasn’t you, was it?”
“What?”
Then it wasn’t. Not that she had thought it was. If it had been him, she would have seen the swirling of colors around him, the signifier that he was preparing to travel.
Ryn waited, half expecting there would be another sense, but it didn’t come again.
As she continued to look around her, she searched for signs of anything that would tell her what had happened to the disciple. There was nothing.
“Ryn?” Dillon said.
She turned away from the table where she’d been staring, looking at the lantern glowing on the surface, and frowned. “What is it?”
“Is it getting darker in here?”
“What?”
“It seems almost like it’s darker.”
It was a strange thing to say, and with a start, she lunged for Dillon, straining to reach him. If it were getting darker, that could only mean—
Dillon collapsed.
Ryn backed away, watching the man from Ih as he gradually approached. Now that she was aware of him, it was easy enough for her to make him out, but she hadn’t noticed him before.
That was a powerful ability if he was able to overwhelm her enhanced eyesight.
“You are troublesome,” he said.
“I am the emissary of the Great One, Olandar Fahr.”
“So you said. It doesn’t change the fact that you are troublesome.” He started toward her. It seemed as if the shadows around him were swirling. There was power to those shadows, and it appeared almost as if they were alive, making their way toward her. The more she watched, the more certain she was that she needed to get away from him. With Dillon down, there wouldn’t be any way for her to do so. She needed him to get up and help her.
Ryn looked around, searching for any way she might be able to get free, but the man blocked her way out. Not only that, but the way he used shadows seemed to bar her in. Though she wasn’t sure, she worried he might be able to wrap them around her in a way that would prevent her from escaping.
She should have taken the opportunity to escape from the palace when she’d had it.
She scrambled back and bumped into the table. Slipping around it, she kept the man in front of her but doubted she’d be able to do so for much longer. He was stalking toward her, the shadows spreading around her, sweeping in. It wouldn’t be much longer before he used them to practically embrace her, wrapping her in whatever strange power he had.
“When the Great One finds out—”
“The Great One will fail.”
“You’re with him, aren’t you?”
“Who?”
“Him. Lareth.”
The dark-haired man frowned. “If only you understood, but…” He shook his head, and Ryn staggered back another step, and then another, each time feeling as if she were retreating, but at the same time having nowhere else she could go.
All she could think about was how she wasn’t a fighter. She was an observer. Her role was not to battle on behalf of the Great One. It was to witness everything he did, provide her view of it. That was all.
There were others who were supposed to be fighters on his behalf. Those fighters should be here.
And she had missed her opportunity. She could have rescued Dolan, but instead she had questioned him, placing him in the cell, and now she was going to end up captured by this dark man.
She slammed into the wardrobe.
When she did, a wave of nausea started to work up through her. Ryn prepared to push it away. When she did, the man surged toward her, darting forward. She tried to slip off to the side.
Nausea rolled through her, and he was there. Reaching her.
She fought, but callused hands grabbed her, and then nausea struck her again.
When it cleared, she blinked. She was outside, daylight breaking in the distance, the city of Lexa looming ahead of her. Within the middle of the city, she saw the palace.
Dillon held her hand, his callused fingers squeezing hers. She should have known that he had come for her, but all she had felt was the rolling nausea of someone preparing to travel to her.
Dillon leaned forward, breathing heavily. “That’s about all I can do.”
“Thank you.”
“What happened?”
She shook her head. “I don’t even know. I don’t have any idea what he did, other than he was using shadows, controlling them as he wrapped them around me.”
And had Dillon not traveled to her, she would have been captured, subjected to whatever it was he’d intended to do to her.
“Give me a few moments to rest, and then we can go somewhere else.”
As Ryn stared toward Lexa, she shook her head. “I don’t think that we can.”
“You saw what just happened.”
“I did, and I know that if we go, whoever has taken control of the palace will maintain that hold.”
“What do you intend to do?”
“I think we need to rescue Dolan and the others.”
44
Ryn
Ryn squeezed the necklace, gripping the sigil tightly. She held on to it, afraid to let go. Her hand made it warm, and she focused on her breathing, trying to slow it, keep it steady, though she felt as if she failed. As she squeezed on the locket, the sense of the Great One filled her.
If only he could find her.
He wouldn’t have known she’d left Dreshen, and if he returned there, she wasn’t worried about his safety, but she was worried he would wonder where she’d gone and why. If word got out that she’d gone off with Dillon, what kind of questions would the Great One ask?
And it didn’t really matter. The Great One deserved to know she was unharmed, and yet, she wasn’t entirely sure that was true. Now that she was sitting outside of Lexa, focusing on the city, staring at it as the sun continued to rise while listening to Dillon breathe heavily in his sleep, she was acutely aware of the pain throbbing in her arms and legs. She hadn’t looked at where the metal pierced her skin since placing her cloak on, and she pulled up the sleeves, startled to see it seemed to be rewrapped more tightly around her wrists. It was almost as if the sacred metal were trying to pull itself into her body.
What would happen to her if it did?
Probably the same thing that had happened to her when the metal had been placed on the back of her head. That had absorbed within her the same way, a strange connection to it that seemed to be demanding she draw it in.
Other than an awareness of people traveling, Ryn didn’t think she had any new abilities. That was useful enough and had been especially helpful while trying to escape the attack, allowing her the opportunity to push away those who might travel to her.
What if she had been pushing away the Great One?
She hadn’t considered that before, but it was a real possibility. She might have pushed him away while trying to hold on to her connection.
This time, she wasn’t going to wake Dillon up any sooner than necessary, determined to give him all the rest he needed in order to fully recover. The next step would be to get Dolan and the others out of the palace. It would take energy on his behalf, and when he was done, they would need to hurry and find safety in another way.
She still wasn’t sure what they would do. Even when they managed to get to Dolan and the others, there was the possibility they would need to get them out of the palace, and with what she had determined with Dillon, it
would involve an extra step, transporting them to the door and then them scurrying through it to transport once again.
Would they be fast enough?
She poured her concerns into the necklace, fearing what would need to happen.
Her mind continued to race, working through the various scenarios, uncertain whether she would succeed.
This was beyond her, wasn’t it?
All she wanted to do was serve the Great One, to do as he’d asked, but this wasn’t the kind of thing he’d ever asked of her.
Observe.
“Why would he place me in such a dangerous situation?” she whispered.
She wrapped her arms around her knees, looking around her. They were situated well outside of the city, in a gentle meadow dotted with flowers. Cows grazed nearby, penned in, but she saw no sign of the farmer who owned them. She was thankful for that, not sure what she would have done if she’d encountered the farmer. Would she have needed to continue traveling, moving further and further away from Lexa, or would she have been forced to fight?
That was not her way.
Thankfully, there’d been no sign of anyone else. Wind gusted from time to time, but the day was otherwise clear, the sunshine warm and comforting—almost too warm. It didn’t entirely suit her mood.
She continued to squeeze the sigil. She wasn’t sure why she did, only that she felt as if it connected her to the Great One in some way. It was probably nothing more than her imagination. If only he’d given her some way to call him, to summon him when she had the need—but if he had done that, she would probably have called him far more often than was necessary.
When she did find him, she was curious what he would do. She’d seen him angry a few times, but always for good reason, and always because he’d been disappointed by those serving him. It wouldn’t be surprising for him to react in the same way now. Those who’d served him had disappointed him by losing control of the assets, and he would be angry.
The Coming Chaos Page 43
