The Coming Chaos

by D. K. Holmberg

  “I think the better question would be how many do you know about?”

  “We know about the three that you mentioned, and there is another, the wisdom stone,” Daniel said. He thought it was best he reveal that to Alistan, but he had no intention of sharing where to find the wisdom stone. That was something that needed to be kept a secret, at least for now, until he could decide how much he truly trusted Alistan.

  “Ah. The wisdom stone is one of the more difficult ones to uncover. I know many have searched over the years, and many have claimed to have been touched by the gift of the wisdom stone, though the question has always remained how many were truly affected. It has been hidden, though if what I suspect is true, then it would be found at one of the great universities. Seeing as how Thyr is no more, that leaves Asador or Morchar or Dundas or Lorialn or…” He waved his hand, smiling. “As you see, there are plenty of possibilities.” He cocked his head to the side, looking at them. “From the way you say it, I wonder if perhaps you have not already found it.”

  “Perhaps,” Daniel said.

  Alistan clapped his hands together. “I understand why you wouldn’t share the location, but at least tell me if I’m correct in my theory.”

  “You are correct,” Daniel said.

  “Wonderful,” he said. “I’ve been in Keyall so long I thought I would never learn.”

  “Can you tell us about the fifth stone?”

  “There are more than five,” Alistan said, frowning as he glanced from Daniel to Rayen.

  “We don’t think so,” Daniel said.

  “No? What of your homeland?”

  “Everything we have learned about Elaeavn suggests that while there is power there, it doesn’t represent an Elder Stone.”

  “No,” Alistan said. “It must. Your people have such wonderful abilities.”

  “We do, but that doesn’t mean that those abilities are representative of Elder Stones.”

  “What are they, then?”

  How much should he reveal to Alistan? He didn’t know the man well enough to trust him, and yet, there was something about him that he thought could be very helpful. It was more than just his knowledge. Daniel didn’t know whether or not he really chased the Elder Stones for power. If he wasn’t after them for the sake of power, then he was nothing more than a scholar, a caretaker like the librarians within Elaeavn.

  “From what we can tell, what we thought were Elder Stones in Elaeavn were something else. They are tied to the Great Watcher.”

  “Who is an elder,” he said.

  “We don’t think so,” Daniel said.

  “What else could he be but an elder?” Alistan got to his feet, went over to one of the shelves, and returned with the book. He flipped through the pages before setting it down in front of Daniel. “Look through it. You will see what I mean.”

  Daniel paged through it, looking to see what it was that Alistan referred to, and as he did, he didn’t come up with much of anything. “I can’t read it.”

  “You can’t read?” Alistan asked.

  Daniel smiled. “I can read just fine, I just can’t read this.”

  Alistan came around and looked over his shoulder. “Ah. I hadn’t considered that you wouldn’t be familiar with this language. It is an older language, but it should be widely known.”

  “Maybe widely known to you, but not everywhere.”

  “Perhaps not. Anyway, what this says is that there are various places of power, essentially touched by the gods, and what are the elders other than gods?”

  “The Great Watcher is not an elder,” Daniel said.

  “Why would you believe that?”

  “I didn’t, at first. The more we’ve learned, the more I feel it’s true. Whatever the Great Watcher might be, he sits outside of the elders.”

  “Outside of the elders?”

  Daniel got up and went over to the Tsatsun board and grabbed five pieces. He carried them over to Alistan, placing the Stone in the center, and he began to arrange the other pieces around it. Without meaning to, he had grabbed five dissimilar pieces, pieces that could represent the elders, at least to whoever had created the game.

  “We know of five elders, and each of them has some sort of power. They sit on what is called the Council of Elders.”

  “And this one?” Alistan asked, motioning to the middle piece. “What does the Stone represent?”

  “As far as we can tell, the Stone represents the Great Watcher.”

  Alistan took the book back, leaning backward and studying them. “What gave you this idea?”

  “It wasn’t my idea. It was Carth’s.”

  “And what gave her that idea?”

  Daniel shook his head. “I don’t exactly know. But we found something that suggests to us that it’s right.”

  “What did you find?”

  “Daniel—”

  He shook his head. “I think we need to share with him as much as we can in order to better understand what we’re dealing with, Rayen. I know we want to keep this to ourselves, but…”

  But if Carth had wanted Alistan involved, wouldn’t she have said something?

  She would have known that he had knowledge and experience when it came to the Elder Stones. Why hadn’t she mentioned him before?

  “I think… I think we need to share with him what we know,” Daniel said.

  “It’s dangerous.”

  “So is not knowing.”

  Rayen shrugged. “It’s your choice. I’ll go along with it.”

  “You think Carth would be upset?”

  “I don’t think you have to be worried about her so much as you have to be worried about them.”

  48

  Lucy

  Lucy walked along the shores of the C’than stronghold, looking out at the water. There was a strange energy here. The longer she was here, the more certain she was of what she detected. It came from more than just the sense of the power of the waves crashing along the shore. This was a different sense that filled her with unease.

  Partly that had to do with what they planned. Or rather, what she planned. She didn’t know if it was going to work, but the more she thought about what needed to happen, the more she understood she needed to play a part. In order to do so, she would have to use her ability on the Architect.

  If she did so in the right way, she believed she would be able to draw him out, and more than that, she believed she would be able to draw out Olandar Fahr.

  The sky continued to darken, the waves crashing against the shore. The longer she stared, the more certain she was that power was slamming repeatedly against the shore, and yet she wasn’t sure if there was anything she could do about it.

  The energy was almost overwhelming.

  Lucy focused on that power, thinking about the waves, the chaos, and waited.

  Carth was supposed to be here soon.

  Thunder rumbled out in the distance, and she sat there, watching it, enjoying the way it moved toward her. There was power in that thunder, and power in the coming storm. She wondered if it might rain.

  Darkness began to fall, and as she sat along the shoreline, she stared out at the waves, watching until it became obvious that the shadows were something beyond what she had believed at first.

  They weren’t related to the darkness of the coming storm at all. It was Carth and her power.

  Getting to her feet, Lucy waited.

  Whenever she had traveled with Carth, she had a sense that the other woman had other ways of transporting herself. She would have to in order to have been as prolific as she was over the years, to be able to move from place to place as easily as she had managed, and yet, Lucy had yet to see it. It was as if Carth had wanted to hide from anyone else whatever abilities she might possess.

  Now that she was here and watching as the darkness rolled toward her, Lucy thought she understood. Carth was the shadows.

  But she was also the flame. Because of that, she was able to do much more than anyone else. She was the chaos o
f the storm.

  The shadows folded around her, and Lucy smiled to herself. “Are you going to reveal yourself?”

  “I didn’t expect you to be waiting and watching.”

  “What were you expecting?”

  She turned around and found Carth standing across from her. The other woman was dressed in a dark cloak, though that might be only the shadows. Her hair was pulled back, and the darkness that swirled around her was testament to the power she possessed. A pair of swords was strapped to her sides.

  “When Ras summoned me, I didn’t expect anyone to be waiting for me.”

  “I’ve never seen you travel like that.”

  “Few have.”

  “Do you often come like that?”

  “It takes considerable effort, so generally I don’t. I know better than to use my connection to the shadows in such a way that would expend that much energy.”

  “How much energy does it take?”

  “More than it once did.” Carth glanced toward the tower. The shadows were swirling around her, and they mingled with the tower for a moment before retreating. “You brought others here.”

  She could detect that with little more than a touch of the shadows? She really was far more powerful than Lucy usually gave her credit for. She should remember that.

  “I did. Ras offered to help a little bit, but that’s not why I summoned you.”

  “You summoned me? I thought Ras was the one who called for my help.”

  “He called for you because of me. I’ve been tracking the Architect, and I’ve come across a few things that are troublesome.”

  She told Carth about the attack in the town, the experiment she suspected was taking place, and then about the sense of the Architect, and her need to try to find where he was going. If they could collect the Architect, they might be able to get answers about the Ai’thol and Olandar Fahr.

  “You risk yourself against a powerful man.”

  “You’ve done the same countless times.”

  “I have, and yet I’m not quite as defenseless.”

  “I wasn’t defenseless. I managed to escape.”

  Lucy could practically feel the disappointment within Carth, and yet she didn’t care. She wasn’t going to do anything other than what she had done, and she’d needed to use that opportunity to try to track the Architect. Had she not, she might not have come up with another solution.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does. If we lose you, we lose a critical ally.”

  Lucy smiled. “I don’t know that I’m all that critical.”

  “Then you haven’t been paying attention. You have an important role to play in all of this, Lucy Elvraeth.”

  “Is that something you’ve Seen?”

  “My time holding the wisdom stone may have given me some understanding, but it was fleeting. The stone itself is dangerous, and yet, I understand the value of it.”

  “That wasn’t a no.”

  “Then no. It’s nothing that I’ve Seen. It’s recognizing what you’ve done. You’re the one who’s chasing down the danger of the C’than. Because of you, we understand just what has been taking place.”

  “But we don’t. We know there must be others who have the knowledge we need, and until we have it, then we might not be able to stop anything.”

  “We are getting closer.”

  “What have you been doing?”

  “I have been pursuing information.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “The kind that suggests there is something more than what we understand taking place.”

  “Such as what?”

  “Your friend Haern has been dealing with something. There was an attack. Whoever attacked used lorcith in ways I haven’t seen before. From what I can tell from what Haern said, it’s in a way he hasn’t encountered before either.”

  “Haern wouldn’t be the one to ask,” Lucy said.

  Carth watched her, saying nothing.

  There was something about the quiet way she watched that suggested there was more than what Lucy knew.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s nothing,” Carth said.

  “It’s not nothing. You know something.” Did it have anything to do with the reason Hearn had been muted when she’d tried Reading him?

  “It’s not what I know, it’s what I’ve experienced. And what I’ve seen, along with what you are describing, suggests there has been more taking place than what we know. Someone else is active, someone beyond only Olandar Fahr.”

  “Why do I get the sense that troubles you?”

  “It should trouble you. We don’t know who this other person is, only that they have access to considerable power.”

  Lucy breathed out heavily, looking out toward the ocean. The darkness rolling toward the shore seemed to call to her, beckoning, and she stared outward, trying to focus her mind. It was difficult to do, and the more she stared, the more uncertain she was about what they might uncover. If this was only about Olandar Fahr, that was one thing. With everything they’d seen up to this point, she believed she could find Olandar Fahr, use the Architect to trap him, and yet if it was about something else, someone else, she wasn’t entirely sure they would have enough knowledge to reach him.

  “We know this other person has used the C’than,” Lucy said.

  “Possibly,” Carth said.

  “You don’t know?”

  “I’m not convinced it’s the same, though it could be.”

  “And if it is?”

  “Then I worry that even if we find them, they won’t be the ally we think.”

  “Why not?”

  Carth stared out over the water, and shadows stretched away from her. “I have been dealing with Olandar Fahr for a long time, and as long as I have been struggling against him, I have believed he was playing some game against me.”

  “Hasn’t he?”

  “I don’t know. It’s possible he has, but it’s equally possible there’s something else taking place. Perhaps he has a different opponent than what we know.”

  “Who would that be?”

  She shook her head. “Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer to that, either.” She turned back to Lucy. “What is it that you think we can do with the Architect?”

  “I’d been thinking we’d be able to Push on him.”

  “You believe your control is enough that you’d be able to do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Carth watched her for a moment. “You don’t know, but you wonder if it might be, and…” She cocked her head to the side, and shadows swirled. It was times like these when Lucy couldn’t help but wonder if Carth were somehow Reading her. The other woman claimed she wasn’t, but there was something in the way she looked at her, the analytic twist to her head, that suggested there was more going on than Lucy understood. “You called me back because you didn’t want to risk this yourself.”

  “If I Push on the Architect, there’s a chance he appears. I want to make sure we’re strong enough to do this.”

  “Then we should do it.”

  “Who else would you suggest we find?”

  “Beyond the Binders? I would suggest we find Daniel and Rayen.”

  “I haven’t focused on Daniel in quite some time, and I don’t even know where they might be.”

  Carth smiled tightly. “I might have some idea.”

  “Where?”

  “I can help guide you to Rayen, but I don’t know if I will be able to connect you to her mind the same way. Do you think you can do the same with Daniel?”

  “I used to be able to, but something changed.”

  “The shadows changed for him, Lucy.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “It happened when he went in search of the Elder Stone.”

  Lucy couldn’t imagine what it might be like for Daniel to suddenly have the ability of the shadows. And maybe he didn’t, but she was aware that something had shifted, making it more difficul
t for her to find his mind. The more she focused on him, the harder it was for her to uncover anything. It was almost as if he were a blank to her.

  “If we do this, then we must be prepared for the consequences,” Carth said.

  “What consequences?”

  “The consequences that arise from drawing the Architect—and Olandar Fahr. The consequences that might arise if we are wrong.”

  “Why do you think we might be wrong?”

  “Consider it something of an educated guess.”

  Carth stared at the distant shore, watching outward. The shadows drifted from her, and Lucy couldn’t help but wonder if there might be something more to what Carth suggested. What was Carth keeping from her?

  And maybe it was nothing. Carth was a strategist, first and foremost, so Lucy had to believe whatever it was the other woman discovered would be tied to strategy, though she had no idea what that might be.

  “What of your help?” Carth asked.

  “They aren’t ready,” Lucy said.

  “You won’t know if they’re ready until you test them.”

  Lucy shook her head. “I’m unwilling to do that.” There might be some of them who would be willing to fight, but none of them were fighters—not yet. In time, it was possible they might get to that point, but for now they were not. For now, all they had was the beginning of the knowledge Lucy had been teaching them.

  It would take more time on her part to get them to that point, and even if she did spend more time, she wasn’t convinced it would be enough to prepare them to where they could fight effectively.

  There were some, like Eve, who might want to fight, and it might not matter how Lucy felt about it. They might choose to take action regardless of what choice she would have made for them. It was not her decision to make on their behalf.

  But there were others, like Olivia, or Marcy, or countless others within the village, who were not ready. It was possible they would never be ready. They had to better understand the nature of the power they had been given, and until they did, there might not be anything they could do.

  “It’s not a choice you get to make on their behalf,” Carth said.

  “Is that how you feel about the Binders?”

  “My experience with the Binders has shown me that some choose to fight. Some choose to help in other ways. Others to return to their lives. What has your experience been?”